Robert Braithwaite
Founder of Sunseeker, makers of luxury motor boats and superyachts for the mega-rich – and 007
ROBERT BRAITHWAITE, who has died aged 75, was the founder of the Dorset-based luxury motor yacht builder Sunseeker whose sleek state of the art products became the boys’ toys of choice for the mega-rich from Antibes to the Bahamas and from Arab royals to Russian oligarchs.
Sunseeker motor boats also turned up in four James Bond films and Braithwaite himself made a cameo appearance in the Daniel Craig movie Quantum of Solace, filmed on location in Italy in April 2008, at the helm of one of Sunseeker’s first open-cockpit speedboats, the Sovereign 17.
Born at Hinkley, Leicestershire, on May 12 1943, the middle of three boys, Robert Braithwaite spent much of his early childhood in Otley, Yorkshire, where his parents ran a drapery business. As he was a somewhat sickly child, in the late 1950s the family moved to warmer climes in Hampshire, where his parents became proprietors of a village store near Christchurch.
Family holidays on Lake Windermere, where they owned a dinghy fitted with an outboard motor, had fired Robert’s enthusiasm for boating, and soon after moving to the south coast his father bought a 12-foot Tod dinghy from John Macklin, a local businessman who had just started selling boats. He subsequently went into business with Macklin in 1960, setting up Friar’s Cliff Marine, a small Christchurchbased motor repair and boatselling operation specialising in foreign brands including boats built by the American yard Owens Cruisers. After leaving school Robert joined the business.
To begin with he worked as an engineer repairing outboard motors, but when Owens Cruisers announced it would no longer be distributing to Europe, he spotted an opportunity and proposed that the company should start building their own boats. “I felt that I wanted to create something,” he recalled. “I wanted to build a boat that was British and fantastic.”
He made a deal to buy Owens’ boat moulds and launched the company’s first in-house model – the Sovereign, a sporty 17-footer – on a cold, grey day in 1968.
In 1969, when the in-house boat building operation became too big for the Friars Cliff premises, the company moved to a waterside location in Poole and was renamed Poole Powerboats. When the Formula One driver Henry Taylor visited the company at the Southampton Boat Show in 1972 and asked for a boat that would accommodate a sunbed, the team set about designing one. It was at this point that Robert’s younger brother John joined the business, going on to become the company’s design director.
Poole Powerboats became a pioneer in fibreglass construction and became renowned for design and styling as well as the application of the latest technologies and materials. Orders got bigger, the boats got bigger and more luxurious and the workforce and sites in and around Poole harbour expanded. Sales dealerships opened around Europe and the company was renamed Sunseeker in 1985. By the turn of the century Sunseeker had become the world’s largest privately owned motor yacht production builder, while Robert Braithwaite became one of the best-known figures in the boating world.
After weathering the initial impact of the credit crunch, Sunseeker found itself at the sharp end of the financial crisis of 2009-10 when, due to adverse exchange-rate conditions, it posted its first loss. The collapse of its rival luxury yachtmaker, the Italian firm Ferretti, had hit a string of British banks and despite Sunseeker’s healthy order book and strong cash flows, the banks took fright and foreclosed.
The business was saved through a debt restructuring deal by FL Partners, an Irish investment boutique. The situation stabilised and in 2013 the company was sold to the Chinese Dalian Wanda group. Robert Braithwaite stepped down from his day-to-day role at Sunseeker in 2012 but continued as president.
Sunseeker now employs some 2,600 people, operating from seven production plants and shipyards around Poole, building boats, yachts and superyachts ranging from 38 to 161 feet. In 2011 The Daily Telegraph reported that the company’s most recent offering – “a 155 foot beast, set to float with a £20m price tag” – would cost about £15,000 per week to run: “If you want to fill it with fuel, that’ll be £40,000. Kitting out some of the boats with a full entertainment system? About £200,000. One owner even requested a pole-dancing pole.”
Braithwaite, however, preferred to take to the nearby Solent in his modest 20ft Cornish Crabber, a traditional wooden sailing craft. He was never above getting his hands dirty and for years cut a familiar figure at the annual London International Boat Show polishing his boats and preparing for boarders.
A generous philanthropist, among other things he donated £3.5 million for a da Vinci robot to support advanced keyhole surgery for cancer patients at Poole Hospital.
He served as chairman of the British Marine Federation on three occasions and was a Deputy Lieutenant of Dorset. In 2002 he was Ernst & Young UK’S “Entrepreneur of the Year”. He was appointed MBE in 1992 and CBE in 2007.
Robert Braithwaite’s marriage was dissolved and he is survived by two daughters.