AMSTERDAM – In 2024, scores of shipyards mark anniversaries across the Dutch flatlands, laced by silver lakes and rivers. They pursue different client and marketing goals for yachts, small and large. It is a healthy sector. A glance at three shipyards serving very different markets.
- Feadship
At the top sits Feadship. Probably the most adventurous of the dozen Dutch custom superyacht builders, it sells its yachts to the superrich. Feadship turns 75 this year and recently launched the 59.5m (196.2 ft.) Project 713, which has an elegant blue-grey hull and a white superstructure and cuts a dashing figure on the water. The project marks another step in Feadship’s drive to become climate-neutral in six years.
Project 713 is its first with solar cells for auxiliary power generation. Its diesel-electric propulsion can run on non-fossil HVO fuel, and its hull is optimized for cruising, not top speed.
The solar panels, custom-made in the Netherlands, are designed for optimal performance and durability and have the most efficient silicon cells. They contribute to the yacht’s energy efficiency, producing up to 24 MWh annually. Project 713 is the first new-built Feadship with FSC-certified plantation teak on all decks.
2. Van den Hoven Shipyard
The B. (it stands for Bart) van den Hoven Shipyard is the quintessential Dutch family-owned yard. Boats and sailing have always figured large in the Van den Hoven family. For Bart, building boats began as a hobby in 1992 when he built a 10-meter project in his backyard.
This year, the B. van den Hoven shipyard marks its 25th anniversary. It makes 3 or 4 high-end steel cruisers of up to 21m (69ft.) a year, very high-end motor yachts in Executive and Voyager models that stretch from 15 to 25m (50 to 80ft)—the whole family pitches in, a standard formula in the Netherlands.
The shipyard, says Bart van den Hoven, serves increasingly discerning clients. “Our customers often have years of motor yacht experience, the nautical life and yards in general. They have clear ideas about comfort, quality, sailing experience and the safety they desire – as well as the space, layout, finishing, service and warranty work.”
Van den Hoven switched to aluminum hulls after a 2017 visit to his yard by yachting media types from Italy, Spain and Norway. “They were impressed by the quality of our yachts,” he told this newsletter afterward. “But they added, ‘Bart, there is no way you can sell steel yachts in our countries. They are just too slow!” That led Van den Hoven to switch to aluminum yachts doing up to 24 knots, double that of steel hulls in 2020.
The VandenHoven shipyard makes semi-custom builds that show a wide range of modifications. With the whole family pitching in, the yard enjoys short lines of communication. Bart says Van den Hoven Jachtbouw is financially secure.
3. Linssen Yachts
Located in the Netherlands’ southern panhandle, which pokes into Belgium and Germany, Linssen Yachts has long been a successful outlier in a country that prides itself on one-off boatbuilding. The yard builds its displacement motor yachts of up to 16m (52ft) on a proprietary conveyor belt system that has delivered some 600 motor yachts since 2006.
CEO Yvonne Linssen says the conveyor system her yard designed – and improved on since its launch – is efficient, safe and delivers good quality. The Logicam (Logistics and Computer-Aided Manufacturing) production process moves yachts through a hall past workstations, each with a dedicated build task. “The entire process was unique in the Dutch industry in 2006 and still is today,” says Linssen. Her company marks its 75th anniversary this year.
It is an outlier in the Netherlands. Dutch makers of anything from modest recreational yachts to craft longer than a football field prize one-off customization over conveyor belt speed and efficiency.
Linssen Yachts staff designed the conveyor build system, and the company had it built by a local steel company. In sedan and aft cabin versions, Linssen makes 70 luxury steel motor yachts a year in the 9-16m segment. They find loyal clients across Europe.
These days, Linssen looks forward and runs a menu of activities to secure the yard’s safe future. Sustainability is critical to that. The shipyard works against a tight deadline to transform all of its yachts to electric propulsion by 2030.
It pursues a ‘Zero Emission Timeline’ to full sustainability, beginning with cutting emissions of fossil fuel gases. Soon, it will use only Gas-to-liquefied diesel on its new yachts, a clean-burning alternative to conventional fossil diesel. Its pollutant emissions levels are substantially lower than those of traditional fuels.
The sustainability timeline is a hefty to-do list. It commits Linssen to gradually introduce “the first full electric” motor yacht, develop “diesel-to-electric retrofit packages” as well as “pollution-free range extenders” to transform to electric propulsion.
The shipyard produces high-end, water-displacement motor yachts of 9 to 16.5m (30 to 54ft) in four series: Grand Sturdy, Sport Luxury, Variotop and Variodeck.
Managing Director Ed Houben says the 2030 sustainability deadline may sound ambitious but is no pie-in-the-sky undertaking. “Sustainability and innovation can go hand in hand,” he says.
www.feadship.nl / www.bvandenhovenjachtbouw.nl / www.linssenyachts.com
