From an office overlooking the Oceanco shipyard in Alblasserdam, the Netherlands, energy tycoon Mohammed al-Barwani watched workers putting the finishing touches on a yacht that’s longer than a football field.
Once complete, the 92-meter (301-foot) vessel will feature nine bedrooms, a spa and a suite decorated with champagne- colored upholstery and a swirling zebra-stripe motif on terra cotta and eramosa-stone walls.
“We want to build bigger boats, more complicated boats,” al-Barwani, a 62-year-old billionaire who has never appeared on an international wealth ranking, said in an interview at the company’s headquarters in the Rotterdam suburb on the River Noord. “We want to be number one.”
In the three years since he bought Oceanco from Greek shipping magnate Theodore Angelopoulos for an undisclosed sum, al-Barwani has helped make the company into one of the world’s most reputable luxury-boat makers, according to Paul Fowkes, managing director at Corporate Jet & Yacht Solutions, a Nottingham, U.K.-based financing company.
The company was the first to build pools on superyachts, Fowkes said. It has since added pools with mechanical floors that can be raised or lowered to create a plunge pool, children’s pool or helicopter landing pad.
Dutch Pedigree
The number of seaborne superyachts, which are defined as professionally manned luxury motor vessels exceeding 24 meters, increased 43 percent in five years to 6,290 in 2012, according to the (Super)Yachting Index, an industry report published by London-based charter company Camper and Nicholsons International and SuperyachtTimes.com. The boats are marketed almost exclusively to the world’s billionaires, and usually are priced starting at about $175 million.
According to Fowkes, the $10 billion industry is dominated by two other companies: Bremen-Vegesack, Germany-based Luerssen Werft GmbH and Haarlem, the Netherlands-based Feadship Royal Dutch Shipyards. Both family-owned enterprises trace their roots to the 1870s.
“In the 85- to 100-meter size range, in terms of the price quality matrix, Luerssen and Feadship are the market leaders and Oceanco is right behind them,” he said. “You have the pedigree of the Dutch build, first class attention to detail. These are the qualities that a buyer looks for.”
Rising Sun