Yachting Art Magazine

Multihulls - Nautitech Catamarans' Safeguard Plan Registered

The French Regional Labour Administration (Direccte) has just approved the Employment Safeguard Plan (PSE in French) for the Nautitech Catamarans shipyard.

Multihulls - Nautitech Catamarans' Safeguard Plan Registered

Negotiations between the shipyard's management and the employees' representatives within the framework of the PSE announced on 5 June, have enabled a favourable agreement to be finalised in order to minimise the social impact.

This PSE provides, on the one hand, for the implementation of long-term partial unemployment measures, accompanied by a qualifying training course, and, on the other hand, support for voluntary departures with redeployment measures, and finally, internal redeployment with adaptation training.

In all, some 20 people will leave the company, which is significantly less than in the initial scenario, which envisaged 60 departures).

"I am satisfied with the quality of the dialogue that was established throughout the negotiation process with the employee representatives, which provided a favourable working basis for the company and its employees. We have agreed on most of the points of this restructuring, which aims to give the company a new dynamic", explains Gildas le Masson, General Manager of Yachting Art. "In particular, the pooling of the two production lines into one, and the general reorganization of the company with the future workforce, will enable Nautitech to return to growth. We will then be ready to enter this new period, with a strategy of conquest and a redefinition of the distribution model in the owner's boat market, a segment in which we now want to expand. focus, while also capitalizing on digitalization".

Repositioning of the brand on the owner's catamaran market

To succeed in this challenge, Nautitech's strategy is to refocus its activity on what has made the brand successful, owner-operated catamarans. The charter market, which was heavily impacted by the Covid crisis, is now out of the picture. 

Nautitech should unveil its new strategy at the autumn boat shows.

Analysis

This PSE and the long-term short-time working measures implemented, should enable the yard to get out of a difficult situation, a situation amplified by the Covid crisis, but whose roots are older.

Positioned on the market for production catamarans aimed at both owners and charterers, Nautitech has suffered in recent years from the dynamism of its competitors, Lagoon, Fountaine-Pajot and above all Bali, whose unique saloon-cockpit concept has undermined the open-space concept of the Rochefort shipyard.

Restricted by a policy of limited innovations - the range comprising 2 models is now old, notwithstanding the 40 and 46 upgrades - and an industrial tool that does not allow the company to pass the 100 units per year mark, the production threshold beyond which a builder of mass-produced catamarans generates profits, Nautitech could only reposition itself in the end on a narrower market, that of owner-built catamarans.

This market is in fact the original market for the Nautitech brand.

Returning to it therefore seems logical, which will require cash (to develop new models) and time. This is in a context where Groupe Bénéteau has a new brand, Excess Catamarans, which is very ambitious in this segment, and where the generalist brands in the world of production catamarans will no doubt be tempted to develop, to offset the drop in volumes on the charter market...

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