Business

Sunday April 7 marked the final day of the fifteenth edition of the International Multihull Show. At La Grande-Motte, on the shores of the Mediterranean, most of the shipyards’ sales managers were smiling from ear to ear. As they readily admitted, the show had been reassuring. Following a lukewarm Cannes Yachting Festival back in September, and a series of lackluster American boat shows - we won’t even mention boot Düsseldorf, boycotted by multihull builders in 2024 - it seemed legitimate to ask serious questions about market trends. At their early-season press conference, Groupe Bénéteau Managing Director Gianguido Girotti warned that “The years on cocaine are now over, and we’re back to normal!” The end of the Covid pandemic saw demand for multihulls explode. Many customers experienced a compelling desire to move ahead with a project that would have been still a long way off: they needed a multihull as soon as possible to be sure of being able to escape, be safe with their families, reconnect with nature... As a result, the pressure was transferred to suppliers, who began to experience inventory difficulties and consequently production delays. Delivery times were automatically extended. Inflation and geopolitical tensions quickly cooled the market’s extreme situation. For multihulls, the slowdown was less severe than in other sectors - but was nonetheless palpable having seen two decades of particularly strong growth.

An industry still with little automation

If we stick to the magic of the free, competitive market, are multihull prices set to fall after rising so spectacularly in recent years? If only the law of supply and demand applied, this would seem logical. But in reality, a multihull is an infinitely more complex asset than an intangible share on the stock market, whose price fluctuates every second. What’s more, building a catamaran or trimaran takes a relatively long time, and is still very much a manual operation, even if manu- facturing processes have been improved to save hours and protect the health of employees, notably with GRP parts now made by infusion. Nonetheless, labor still accounts for 60% of direct manufacturing costs for a mass-production multihull, compared with 40% for materials. For a 40-foot catamaran, no less than 1,200 man-hours are required. If you’re interested in a large custom multihull, you’re looking at tens of thousands of hours. We recently checked the production time for a 70-foot one-off: 30,000 hours had been clocked up! And that figure doesn’t include design and engineering time. In addition to the amount of labor required, hourly rates have also risen. Firstly, to keep pace with the inflation that employees have to contend with in their daily lives: for example, up 14.2% between 2019 and 2024 in France, the world leader in multihull manufacture. The marine industry as a whole employs a million people worldwide, including 42,000 in France (to which you can add 100,000 indirect jobs). ...