Turkey Ranks Third in Mega Yacht Production Business
Turkey ranks third in the world in fruitful mega yacht making business after Holland and Italy, with a 9 percent market share, according to a local professional.
Only 10 Turkish shipyards produce mega yachts, or ‘expensive toys’, as Sonay Günay of Turkey’s 777 Tacht Group calls them.Turkey has sailed ahead of many European countries as a leader in the mega yacht building and marketing race, as remarkable growth in the sector showed Turkey ranking third among Europe’s largest producers of mega yachts, following Italy and the Netherlands. Business in the local sector has reached an annual volume of 300 million euros.
“Turkey ranks third in the world regarding yacht orders overall in 2010. Italy tops with a market share of 37 percent, followed by the Netherlands with 11 percent and Turkey with 9 percent,” Sonay Günay, the owner of 777 Yacht Group Company – Turkey’s first and only marketing company for mega yachts – told the Hürriyet Daily News in a recent interview.
There are about 300 shipyards in the country, of which only 70 produce boats and yachts, Günay said. Of these, only seven to 10 shipyards in İstanbul’s Tuzla, Yalova and Antalya deal with the production of mega yachts, internationally defined as yachts that are 50 meters or longer.
Based on the number of yearly orders, Turkey ranks as the third largest mega yacht producer in Europe, according to Günay. 777 Yacht Group plans to introduce mega yachts produced in Turkish shipyards to customers abroad and attract foreigners to the Turkish market, she said.
The 777 Yacht Group is an exclusive broker for the F45 mega yacht, a model worth 36 million euros produced in the 167-year-old Dutch Feadship Royal Van Lent shipyard that has manufactured more than 2,200 boats and over 126 mega yachts.
“The F45, a standard yacht which addresses common taste, will be exhibited at the Monaco Boat Show in September,” Günay said.
This mega yacht model is being introduced to the world market by 777 Yacht Group, the only Turkish company serving as a central agency for brokering mega yachts, according to Rasim İlker Yıtık, the projects director at 777 Yacht Group.
The company intends to prove that Turkish people also have a taste for mega yachts and that brokers for these special yachts exist in Turkey as well, Yıtık said. Turkey is producing a considerable number of mega yachts already, and “as you might know, the number of people using Turkish yachts around the world, including Johnny Depp, is increasing,” he said.
Yıtık said it takes on average 2.5 years to produce one mega yacht, and Turkey launches 10 mega yachts per year. Of these 10 yachts, one is sold in Turkey and nine are sold abroad, he added.
Turkey has 8,333 kilometers of coastline and there are about 360 registered boat and yacht producers, according to the country’s Yacht and Boat Industry Federation, or YATEF. The figure is 1,200 for the US, 950 for Italy, 412 for Germany and 400 for the UK, according to data published on the federation’s website.
Lack of infrastructure
Only a few marinas are suitable for anchoring a mega yacht in Turkey, according to Günay, who said serious infrastructure investment must be made in this direction. “Mega yachts coming from abroad remain obliged to anchor in open sea when they do not find a suitable place along Turkey’s coast. This negatively affects tourism, because they enjoy the beauty of our bays but cannot get inland.”
“Megayachts are an expensive toy,” said Günay, adding that the weekly rental price for a normal yacht ranges between 100,000 and 300,000 euros. The weekly rental price for a 50- to 120-meter-long mega yacht, on the other hand, may be as high as between 12 million and 120 million euros.
August 18, 2011
SOURCE: Hürriyet Daily News
