Can one sunk ship bring a whole shipyard to the ground? In this league it could.
Established in 1973, Oyster Marine became a synonym for premiur cruisers capable for regattas and circumnavigating the globe. They’ve received Queen’s Award for Enterprise twice. They produced quite wide range of boats from 26ft to 125ft superyachts. Some of their larges boats were produced in Turkey, but currently Oyster marine has around 400 emplyees in Britan. Their current models were designed by Humphreys Yacht Design. Look at the happy owner Eddie Jordan, who posses Oyster 885, in talk with Rob Humphrey, main designer.
Financial problems
The whole yachting world was shocked in 2015, when Oyster 825 named Polina Star III had been sunk due to keel loss at the sea. Crew was saved, but in this class of ships it brought question marks about causes of this failure. It is long story, very unhappy. Former owner made website about whole incident and following events. Site seems to be correct for both sides of the conflict, read it if you wanna know more about this incident. It is shaming attitude of producer as “Ostrich yachts” ironically. The sunken boat owner made it after Oyster Marine went officially into liquidation problems in february 2018. There is still unsettled claim for 7.3m GBP for loss of that ship. However there is still order book totalling 80m GPB and many waiting customers. As Oyster marine has reached limits of its liquidity, they were unable to produce new ships. After administration, company was sold to highest bidder. From six prospectors, british tech entrepreneur Richard Hadida won with disclosed ammoun. Oyster Marine is up and running since april 2018, after two scary months.
Why Richard Hadida can save it?
Richard Hadida came from computer gaming industry, where he developed company named Evolution Gaming Group AB. Good news is, that he is impassioned sailor and his first plan is to keep company together and give them money for producing boat. He is very down to earth with attitude, he is aware that he came from another business environment. Hadida claims that he is able to help company with liquidity and maybe with marketing and clients after service processes, but he is no maritime businessman yet. He also admits that the reasons for his bid was also personal, as he loves sailing. Of course he want to keep it, it is not just investing for passing by.
What are current plans?
Richard Hadida sailed Eddie Jordan’s very own 825 with him and chartered Oyster yachts on his own several times. Now he plans to save the shipyard. It looks like good mixture from the situation - he wanna stick company together, enable them to produce ships and modernise building technologies for delivering ships more effectively in time.
The new owner claimed that he is working with Humphreys studio on some super-quality 40-42 ft. boats because there is huge market nowadays. For Yachting World he stated that there is no point in having anything between 885 a 118’, so Oyster will be keeping tight in super-yacht prodction. Shipyard predictably plan to focus on safety and security features to catch up with lost reputation due to one (just one) incident.
We are glad that it seems the Oyster Marine is saved. In last decades there were several british companies with liquidity issues, it looks that Oyster found the good savior.
