Now for a comeback?

Bavaria’s lurch into receivership in early 2018 was a shock – and perhaps a pleasant surprise to its competitors. Now its return to the market under the ownership of Berlin-based CMP has the makings of a successful comeback, writes Peter Poland.

The switched-on new team understand build disciplines and quality control, according to Richard Hewett of UK dealer Clipper Marine.

Investing in production capacity and an excellent price-performance ratio sounds pretty obvious. So what went wrong? How could a company that had grown to a massive size thanks to its slick production methods and logical assessment of its market suddenly come a cropper?

As an erstwhile production boatbuilder I often watched others go under. Invariably it seemed that ambition outgrew reality. The desire for bigger and better lured them into the cash-gobbling excitement of tooling up the next big thing.

Bavaria’s C65 model looked to be a case in point. It did not fit into the slick Bavaria systems in Giebelstadt. So after huge tooling costs its building was sub-contracted out to a Croatian company. Which meant that it, and other new models, no longer cruised down Bavaria’s proven production lines. Efficiency suffered as a result.

Now the company is going back to a proven path. n Peter Poland is a former owner of Hunter Boats and a yachting journalist