Technology
The mountain and Muhammed
For many years they have been fastidiously creating some of the world’s finest yachts. One small drawback is that for many clients Baltic Yachts has always been rather a long way away geographically. Not any more...
There are big advantages to building yachts on the west coast of Finland. For the last 50 years it has been a centre of excellence where a talented workforce of shipwrights, joiners, composite builders and many other specialists produce some of the finest sailing yachts in the world, accumulating a vast pool of knowledge, experience and skills. There’s just one snag with the location – it’s a very long way, especially by sea, from the places where most owners choose to sail and keep their yachts. The solution for Baltic Yachts was to set up a service and refit hub in the epicentre of the Mediterranean yachting scene. ‘We started down here with warranty projects,’ says Matthew Lester, Baltic Yachts’ head of after- sales service who leads their steadily growing operation in Palma, Mallorca which is based in and around the STP shipyard in the heart of the city’s old harbour. ‘We were always coming here and we opened a workshop so we didn’t have to work out of our suitcases all of the time. And we were increasingly being asked to
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work on other boats. In 2014 we decided to staff the company here and we’ve never looked back.’ ‘Every year there has been growth and we’ve taken on more and more service and refit work,’ he says. ‘It’s now 80 per cent of our business in Palma, with 20 per cent on the warranty side. We still work closely with Finland and have guys flying down, but we’ve cut that back a lot. We have a permanent workforce that covers carpentry, lamination, plumbing, mechanics, hydraulics, PLCs, electrics… all done by our people, managed by our project managers, with the same level of excellence that we have up north.’ The operation has expanded far beyond just servicing Baltic Yachts’ own fleet and now includes major refit work on many different brands and types of yachts.
Very few of the service team’s clients have their yachts based year- round in Palma but it’s their first- choice location for refits and service work. ‘They migrate all over the world and wind up here in the pre-winter and post-Caribbean times, and also
Above: Baltic Yachts now has its own highly skilled staff of PLC programmers, shipwrights, carpenters, electronics engineers, hydraulic technicians and various other special- ists all based at the STP shipyard in the centre of Palma, Mallorca. They don’t just service Baltic’s own fleet, they also refit many other types and brands of yachts
in the middle of summer,’ Lester explains. ‘The island is a draw and STP is situated very nicely. Crews really like to come here because we’re on the doorstep of the city centre and only five minutes from the airport.’ Baltic’s after-sales staff do still travel, of course, to wherever their services might be needed and some of their work each year is done in the Caribbean, but most of it is now concentrated in Palma. One great benefit of having a permanent base in Mallorca has been the opportunity to build a very strong network of highly skilled and trusted, locally based subcontractors who have broadened the team’s client base as well as the range of services they offer. ‘Sometimes we’re asking them to help us but a lot of the time they’re asking us to help them,’ Lester says. ‘Without the relationships we have with our partners, we wouldn’t be able to operate here in the way that we do. For example last summer we pulled off a major refit of a 100ft Swan in just four months after it had been sitting idle for several years.’
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