Maritimo flags possible public float

At the end-of-year Maritimo media gathering last week, we couldn’t help but walk away sated, if not a little giddy, and that’s without even a sip of the celebratory Veuve Cliquot touching our lips.

Maritimo is going along swimmingly and, casting all the hype aside, the Gold Coast yard is selling more boats. This we know from local dealers and global launches. The Coomera yard is as busy as we have seen it, with more than a dozen boats in various stages of build.

There was also a sense of calm that pervaded the Gold Coast boatbuilder, a kind of cool and calculated approach to things. It’s arrived with General Manager of Operations, Phil Candler, who has a lot of boatbuilding experience, and after Greg Haines came aboard.

This new dynamic brings together a boat user and sales (Haines owns an M58), project manager (Candler) and the boatbuilding doyen in Bill Barry-Cotter. There’s a multigenerational team vibe and a bit less of the attack dog.

Maritimo has found its meaning in life — it’s mojo — and that is as a builder of long-range cruising motoryachts, a niche in which it plans to expand further. But while I sat there listening to the good news, the founder of Maritimo was largely quiet at the head of the table.

Barry-Cotter, as fit and healthy as we’ve seen him, seems pleased with the good men that now surround him, having reached a period in his personal life where he is consolidating and perhaps stepping back.

The journalist within just had to ask the question of the 71-year-old, who has spent more days on his feet, designing and building luxury motorcruisers, than any other boatbuilder in this country…

"What about your personal aspirations, Bill, and your part in Maritimo going forward? Do you see yourself playing an active role in the next three to five years?"

Barry-Cotter said he is still involved in the whole R&D side of thing, but says he probably seeks more advice than he ever did before

"There’s a really good team in there. It really is a concerted effort, the whole R&D side of it," Barry-Cotter said. "The rest of the business, obviously, the business will go along after I’m gone."

"We’re looking at the moment: do we float the company, as an exit strategy for me?

We’re in the process now… there will be a new external chairman of the company and we’ll effectively run the company… it will still be a private company… as a public company… and we’ll run that through as long as it takes” he said.

"It will be run by a board and management, which is a rehearsal for when I’m no longer here. We might go public, we’ll just see how that goes, and if it did go public you would be trying to [expand the company]," he said.

"There is no loose timeline for the ‘float’," adds Barry-Cotter. "But we are working as hard as we can to get it ready, and we’ll just wait for the right time and the window. It’s a rehearsal.

"When I sold over the road [Riviera] and when I sold Mariner it failed because there wasn’t a proper learning curve and if we do it this way it should be seamless. If I want to stay on as a shareholder I can."

Barry-Cotter is also working through his development along Shipper Drive in the Marine Precinct at Coomera, where he owns the biggest piece of undeveloped industrial real estate between the Gold Coast and Brisbane. He plans to sell the land.

Back wearing the boatbuilder hat, Barry-Cotter says the boats today are a lot less production-made than they ever were, that he does a lot of custom work, and there’s a lot more attention to detail.

But he admits he’s mining the same pool of boatowners and that it's hard finding new owners in the world today.

The company is becoming more profitable and following 25 per cent growth YOY in 2015 there are now forecasts of 30 per cent growth in 2016.

"I have the best quality of people I’ve had in 50 years, from management down," Barry-Cotter says, adding that he’s bringing in more apprentices and training them up at specific skill sets.

Candler reiterated over lunch that there was no timeline and a float was likely years away. At this point, a float is still a matter of “if” not “when” we were told.

Haines added that: "Maritimo is setting up the company with a corporate structure, so Barry-Cotter can go away and enjoy himself more often. There will be a management team and a chairman. But the actual float could be as much as five or 10 years away if it happens."

Haines still owns a 50 per cent interest in The Haines Marine Group, which makes Haines Signature boats, among other trailerboats, and distributes Suzuki outboard engines in Australia. "Anything is possible," he added.