Abeking & Rasmussen: The ’boutique’ yard on ‘full power’
Abeking & Rasmussen yacht Cloudbreak on a voyage to remote regions of the world.
It sounds like the first line of a joke: “What starts with the management and ends with the welder?”
But for Björn Benecke, sales manager at Abeking & Rasmussen it is no laughing matter, it is the essence of the business.
“There’s nothing in between,” he tells us. “Everybody has to go full power. This is very important. The team is the key to success in our business. We are all responsible for each other.”
Benecke, who started as an apprentice boatbuilder at Abeking & Rasmussen 22 years ago, says the biggest challenge in his role now is to “fulfil the expectations of all stakeholders”, from clients to colleagues.
“We’re responsible for every single electrical guy, every welder, every designer. We have to give them work, so everybody has their own expectations,” he says. “They are responsible for building the best possible result and we are responsible for bringing the best possible contract to the shipyard.”
Sign up for the Superyacht Investor newsletter
Abeking & Rasmussen in Lemwerder, Germany has a 117-year history.
Spies
Benecke is chatting to us from his office in Lemwerder, near Bremen in Germany. Behind him on the wall is a large picture of Excellence V, built by Abeking & Rasmussen in 2012. The yard sits on the south bank of the Weser river, near the confluence with the Lesum river. Across the water lurks Lürssen. Benecke jokes that they have “hundreds of spies” trained on their rivals. And vice versa.
In reality, Benecke says his “boutique” yard, with its 117-year history and small workforce of 520 people, is “proud” of its place in the market.
“We are competitors. Absolutely. But we take care of each other, and we know each other very well. We have our clients, they have their clients,” he says.
“Quality-wise, we are all the same level in northern Europe, but we are the smallest one with a more boutique character. We do almost everything in-house. Every client is the most important client for us. We only have one superyacht at the same stage and we are very proud that there are no copies. We do full custom.”
Abeking & Rasmussen’s 118m Liva was completed in 2023.
Iconic vessels
He looks around his office, pointing at pictures of other yachts on the walls. “We are very happy about these iconic vessels built to client specifications and to designers’ ideas,” he adds.
Benecke suggest a typical Abeking & Rasmussen client is “in general, extremely experienced in yachting” and as a result they build “lots of very, very secretive private family boats” which tend to be used for about 10 years or more before thoughts turn to resale.
“That makes us extremely proud because it’s very important that we build a very good product quality-wise so they can sell years later for a very good price,” he adds.
The superyacht division is one of four pillars at Abeking & Rasmussen alongside special vessels such as pilot boats, military vessels and a refit sector for all departments.
The workflow fluctuates, with yachts sometimes occupying 90% of effort, but currently it is a more even split across all four pillars, which are all “running with high traffic”, according to Benecke.
The workforce is the same and moves across departments as required. “We are very happy that we have this big diversification because when there are ups and downs in the single departments, we can fulfil that with the other one,” says Benecke, who works alongside sales director Till von Krause.
READ: How ‘candid’ calls and ‘credibility’ got ‘job done’ for brokers
The yacht division accepts new build projects from 60-125m and produces “one or two” every year, although the yard can cater for four or five yachts at the same time at different stages of production. The next slot is the beginning of next year, says Benecke.
The yacht sector’s main project currently is an 80m new build that Benecke says will be another of their “very iconic yachts”.
“It is very, very private,” he adds. The yard also has four superyacht refits ongoing, including Lürssen builds Saint Nicolas and Elysian, as well as projects such as a hydrographic vessel for the Indonesian Navy and three “very big multipurpose vessels” for the German government.
‘Happy people, happy boats’
If competition is fierce among the northern European yards, Benecke is also mindful of “many up-and-coming shipyards” from southern European, including Italy and Turkey.
“This is very interesting because these guys also know how to build boats,” he says.
“The market is very small. You have to work hard and you have to have an extremely good team to fulfil client’s expectations, especially regarding quality, design and schedule.”
Despite the small pool of potential clients, macro-economics and geopolitics are less likely to deter his typical customers, who are “working in different parts of the whole economical system”, says Benecke.
READ: Kicking fenders among the maelstrom of Monaco
But he admits the industry as a whole has suffered from “enormous inflation-related price increases” and other knock-on effects from Brexit, war in Ukraine and Covid. He says while prices have somewhat “levelled”, they are “constantly high”.
“It’s very difficult for the suppliers to do good products because the risk is extremely high for all of us, especially for the small companies,” Benecke adds.
“It’s a little bit more management action needed to have a good material flow and a good subcontractor flow and all this stuff.”
In terms of what’s coming next in yacht building, Benecke says the yard’s standard answer is that “there are no trends because we do total custom”. Essentially, they do the “trends of every single person”, but he suggests the growing demand for “very unique and special ideas” is a trend in itself.
Figuring out technical solutions for “special” materials and items like fireplaces, outside kitchens, jacuzzis, helicopter pads and submarines makes life “very interesting”.
“We have to make a technical proposal before we can discuss that from the emotional side,” he says.
“But we love being pushed by clients and by designers for cool, new stuff. That’s very important for a development shipyard like A&R.”
Looking ahead, Benecke is excited to see Abeking yachts, such as Cloudbreak and Liva, travelling to remote regions of the world, suggesting “the people are happy, the boats are happy”.
Subscribe to our free newsletter
For more opinions from Superyacht Investor, subscribe to our email newsletter.
