In conversation with Arthur Brouwer

When the World Economic Forum met online in January 2022, it discussed pressing topics of international importance, such as continuing the fight against the pandemic and how to revitalise the global economy. Heesen’s CEO Arthur Brouwer discusses the impact of these matters on the yachting industry and Heesen’s plan of action.

Among the global priorities that came out of the online World Economic Forum was environmental preservation– how is Heesen working towards sustainability in yachting?

We take our role seriously, working with suppliers on engine technology and alternative fuel solutions. We also look closer to home, working with pioneers on low drag hull designs, such as the revolutionary Fast Displacement Hull Form. At the 2021 Monaco Yacht Show, we launched BlueNautech, our comprehensive programme to reduce our footprint, which is an initiative already on board our yachts and at our shipyard.?

Two?negative effects?from?increased economic activity?are bottlenecks in the global supply chain and higher inflation than?anticipated?–?have you made any changes in production to mitigate this at Heesen??

We?haven’t?made any changes in production, but we?changed our way of sourcing and bundling materials.?We order components earlier, which means we?work further into the future than we ever did before, and we?try to mitigate the price increase in the supply-chain?by offering bigger volumes to our suppliers.??

Inflation can be seen in materials, but market inflation can be seen in labour and components. Components have a direct impact on building, whereas market swings in materials are more difficult to project.?Luckily we are based in?The Netherlands, so we?can?forecast our labour costs further into the future.?

Across the yachting industry, shipyards are full. How can the yachting sector maintain market momentum? And is expansion on the horizon for Heesen?

We are a financially strong company, so during the pandemic, we took the decision to begin new spec builds. This means that our spec program is fully up to speed. The build of 80m Galactica during this time – the world’s largest and fastest all-aluminium yacht – demonstrates our ability to deliver the largest custom boats that we can do, with reassembly taking place in a third party facility. We have never slowed down and can keep up with market demand.

?Expansion is always an interesting question, but I would like to see continued growth in the market before we create that scenario. We already have capacity to bring four superyachts to market each year, and we build as efficiently as we can. For this reason, we have spec boats available for delivery in 2024, while our competition has them for 2025.