Amels Yachts

No doubt the LE 180 and 212 are beautiful boats but I would also like to see a refreshing design from them.

Do you really believe Amels has the engineering capacity and capability to develope and construct full custom yachts and designs from a white sheet of paper on a regular basis? Their new full custom department will show their capabilities. Even with maximum outsourcing, you will need a good amount of highly qualified own workforce to do that. So called semi custom boats are a nice work around procedure to make profit in that field, especially when you have the ability to reduce the customer in the "semi" part of it to the max. possible.

"Not every salesman in the world is Dutch but every Dutch is a salesman" (Old Chinese saying ).

They've done custom before, they can do custom again. And of course Amels has the engineering capacity. They also have full access to DAMEN's capacity, too.

+1 on HTM's post.

We were talking about their semi custom yachts and not their restablished custom department. The LE 171 was introduced almost 10 years ago and from then on not much changed. They are painted differently, grew to 180ft and got a bigger sundeck and balconies. But that is it basically..they all look basically the same.

Like germanyachting I am also curious if owners by now would prefer a more extensive 'facelift' for the Limited Editions like those car and production boat manufacturers do. Benetti did it also although on smaller boats. A refreshing design would potential clients mark off from the other 20 yacht owners.
At least the LE 199 turned a bit the LE on its ear.

I was also talking about their semi custom yachts Milow. Just adding or subtracting a frame, adding a balcony or bolting a different mast on, is not really semi custom yacht building. That is giving the customer the choice of a different wallpaper or may be having a non structual wall moved a bit.

The LE yachts in reality are production boats or even spec boats with very little options for the potential customer. The changes are done by outsourced assets, so are the kaskos and most of the other work.

That is the way, the majority of the Dutch yachting industry works. They build a lot of boats that way and make good profit out of it. There are only a few Dutch yards, which are capable and willing (because of their setup) to build individual one off designs on a regular basis. Feadship or Royal Huisman for example are two of them. I do not mention smaller builders like Vitters or HJB, because one or two one offs per year are their market segment.

Btw. Eqiwa, the same counts for Damen. Have a close look at their website, their company structure, where most of their commercial vessels are build in reality and the composition of their portfolio of commercial products. You should really talk to somebody, who had been trying to get any kind of individual yacht or commercial vessel from them.

I am not saying at all, that Amels / Damen is not capable of building a good number of very good ships but I am denying or at least questioning their capability and / or capacity or maybe their will to be a flexible and regular builder of individual ships or larger yachts from scratch at the moment.

That may change in the future with the reestablishing of their full custom departement. But it is a long way from a standard ship builder to a renown builder of large, great quality one offs.

Just my 2 (Euro) cents

Damen owns or controls the shipyards that it uses.
Feadship contracts out hull building too.
Amels LE, the exterior of the vessel is set in stone, the interior is fully changeable.
The about of engineering hours put into a LE at the beginning is huge: Amels claimed 100,000 + for the new 242 or 272.
If you want to talk about having them look different on the outside, the Amels should have someone other than Tim Heywood to design them. The ONLY ship of his that isn't the exact same is the LE 199. All the other LE's look the exact same as his custom ones built by Luerssen, et al.

Amels has the will to be flexible and regular builder of full custom ships, other wise they would not have begun marketing the Full Custom.

I hope you will be able to keep your faith and your belief in this company.

I am looking forward to that day, when Amels / Damen is building large full custom complex yachts on a regular basis and being renown for their high quality, delivery on price and time like Feadship or Luerssen.

"It’s a Long Way to Tipperary"

Wow "Madame Kate" lights up really beautifully. The yacht I mean not the dog..

LE180 yard no 470 has been sold according to a Superyacht news site on July 1. The hull is already in Flushing, arrived there April 16 this year.