Alphacraft Boatyard For Sale

[LondonRascal]

I remember not too long back the EDP had an article about encouraging more holiday makers to the southern rivers so would this make an ideal start-up to help bring new life to the area and visitor?  I think not myself.

If one considers the number of boatyards that once existed Brundall I have to ask myself why they dropped by the wayside – was it falling visitor numbers and things really did get so hard that a viable business was no longer possible, or was it that it just began to be rather too much effort than it was worth and an easier living could be made by removing the visitors and concentrating on the assets the business had such as skilled staff for private engineering work and the physical boatyard/marina for moorings without worrying about change over days, the cleaners and laundry needing doing and issues with customers and so on and so forth.

If you managed to buy the entire site and the boats right now and your aim was to have a thriving hire business in 18-24 months I’d think you were mad.  

You are going to need to take each boat and spend many thousands of pounds on them – with the amount of water ingress and damp over the length of time they have been left I’d say all the soft furnishings would need replacement, some bulkheads and doors and floors might well need to be that is before you look at things like new batteries and a good look at the mechanical systems too. You might find that if we have a harsh winter then come the spring you’ve got burst pipes, spilt tanks and expensive repairs on engines to deal with too where they were left. 

You would need more than just a couple of staff working away on this to have any sort of ‘fleet’ ready because while some customers might see the potential, give the support and patience many more would turn up to hire your only two good and ready boats and see the rest of the yard and boats waiting for work to be done and think ‘my goodness what is going on here’ and not venture back. 

Despite this, after you have done this huge amount of work (and no doubt some boats will need less TLC and others likely needing to be practically re-fitted) you have a ‘new’ fleet of boats and a bunch of money to start making through there hire – but where are the customers coming from? 

It would all be based on assumptions which is such a risky thing because if things don’t go to plan such as a terrible wet summer or small niggles causing the first customers to not return or leave a poor review etc there is a large void one would be looking into wondering how it will be filled.  After all, you’d need to make money to pay off the initial purchase, boat refits then you’ve got the everyday ongoing costs such as the staff wages the oil for engines, fuel, rates, utility bills etc etc.  You are going to have to have a nice website that will need to perform well and they don’t come cheap either.

It all seems like a great idea until you look at the sheer scale.  If it was the case that the yard was still running an being sold with the boats in tip top condition and you paid x money and took over the staff and business and carried on under a new name and were able to bring in new investment sure, it would in my mind have worked but now..I cannot see it myself. 

What I think would be nice instead of just becoming another private mooring basin or some space for homes – is a new boat building business come out of this. You’ve got the hoists and shed space; you have some nice hard standing then easy access to the river – I’m not saying it could be another ‘Aquafibre’ but it would make an ideal site for small to medium size craft being built but I don’t think it would work for the hire industry because that is a business that seems generally downsizing in fleet numbers and those who build in the main now build their own.

At a pinch I guess it might be viable if you had a business already and could move here – bring some of your existing customers and boats or expand taking some to this new site, but it would be a gamble and cost a great deal to buy outright – maybe the current owners could be persuaded not to sell up but Lease it.  As things are I think the best of the boats have been snapped up before and what is left will be left.

[teadaemon]

4 hours ago, MauriceMynah said:

Oh! What line are you in now then?

Currently resting, as the acting profession put it, but still a Boat Safety Scheme Examiner at the moment (at least in theory, it being the quietest time of the year for BSS work). Looks like I'll probably go back to working in education in some capacity, unless anyone happens to make me a better offer.

[jeffbroadslover]

I wonder if one of the bigger yards up north might be interested in taking on the yard (without the boats) and then transfer some of their fleet to a southside base?

Jeff

[JawsOrca]

Perhaps Brooms will buy it and put the hirefleet there 

[Vaughan]

Robin, have you ever been a boatyard manager? I think you would make a very good one. You seem well aware of the commercial pitfalls!

I have been thinking what to say about this sad end, but you have said it for me. What you have often mentioned in your post is all about one word - "goodwill". If you are are buying a business with a running reputation, a set of profitable accounts and a good regular customer base then you might have a hope of doing something with it. For some businesses, goodwill has more value than the premises itself. But this? I doubt if I could put a business plan together for a bank, to convince them of the viability of a site off the main river (so no passing trade), liable to serious flooding (so little hope of planning permission) in what is clearly a falling market for both hiring and building, where the business has already ceased trading and where all land access depends on a railway crossing at the bottom of a steep hill in the centre of a crowded residential area which is increasingly becoming a suburb of Norwich.

Broads boat hiring is at present in decline. Sad but fact. It doesn't always have to be, but that will need a change of vision by the BA and a change in global attitudes to holiday leisure. Meantime I see little hope of starting up a new business with a lot of capital to be spent on boats, on a site not best suited to boat hiring. The site is also not big enough to provide a return on capital from marina moorings.

If you know the French waterways as I do, you will know how many hundreds of boats Alphacraft have built over the years, for European yards, but this market has now also gone. The new owners of these big yards are a huge American tour operator, which is hardly investing in new boats and those few are being "put together" (I can't call it building) in various cheap parts of Eastern Europe. So no more Porter and Haylett, no more Crown Cruisers and likewise, no more Alphacraft building.

Sorry, but one has to face facts.

[rightsaidfred]

What a lot of people including the BA don't seem to understand is the UK holiday industry has changed not just boats but cottages, holiday camps etc are now seen as a second or third short break not a mainstream holiday, this is not a Broads problem just a modern change of lifestyle involving the UK as a whole, the mainstream holiday makers here now are visitors from abroad.

Fred

[LondonRascal]

Vaughan, as ever you sum up things very well in far less words that I can usually.  No, I have never been a involved in a boatyard business but you kind of have a 'feel' for things and this I cannot see much viability as a hire business sadly.

I really think the Broads Authority need to wake up to the fact they can only push toll payers so far - after all people choose to use the Broads to explore and base their boat, but they certainly do not have to keep on doing so.  This applies for practically any group of boaters be it owning a single engine river boat to a 800hp twin engine sea boat there must come a point where enough will be enough for a majority.

What I wonder is why was it that things 'took off' for a relatively short space of time - say the late 1960's to the early 1980's where boatyards seemingly could not build boats fast enough for customers to holiday on - where real innovation was going on, from let's face it, what were some pretty small enterprise's in a part of England that is not seen as a hot bed of development. In its own sort of way, Norfolk became for a period of time the boat building equivalent  of Silicon Valley.

Small businesses, many family run, producing their own products - employing local people  and competing against each other to innovate and try new ideas. Some proving more popular than others, some exporting not only the ideas and skills aboard but the product too and then as fast as it all took off do it seems so the decline arrived.

You could argue it was the arrival of cheap package deals to overseas destinations but that does not explain it all.  Why have the Canal's grown as a holiday area (not to mention it becoming a rather 'cool' lifestyle choice for many to now live on Narrow Boats) and the fact  the Thames continues to attract holiday makers spending eye watering hire fees with the likes of Le Boat for their larger longer cruisers and yet the Norfolk Broads carries on slipping away - City Boats of Norwich now another loss.

I think the issue in many ways does come back to the local authorities and Broads Authority themselves. Running a business is not easy, but when you have to contend with so much red tape, increasing charges for Tolls and be you a holiday maker or boat owner suffering from dwindling services such as a lack moorings to stop at or places one can get rid of  rubbish or fill their water tank is it any wonder year after year more and more of the yards have gone?  Less visitors then cause the riverside pubs to suffer too.  I cannot imagine pubs remaining vacant as they do now back when I was born in 1979 - but now they do, and people say they the money to refurbish them - but if such was forthcoming  will people come and visit?  It is that unknown that causes the rot to set in and stay it is just too much of a gamble in many cases.

So I have to ask myself at what point does any area have to that  it begins to be considered viable for 'regeneration funding'?

How things are going, it won't be long before you have say 3 large boatyards that hire boats out and the rest of Broads will be a mass of 'boat parks'.  That begs the question what if these owners decide to sell up - a trickle at first then more and more through increased tolls and Marina berthing fees?

At the moment it seems these boatyards that have turned their basin's over to private moorings are making hay while the sun shines, but let us for arguments sake say you had berths for 45 boats and 10 of your berth holders do not renew and for example are paying say £3,000 a year (I know the sums seem convenient but you get my drift)  then straight away you've lost £30,000.  Repeat this over the whole river system 3 from this Marina, 5 from that one etc and you've got a real problem.  Business suddenly under pressure from previously an easy income stream now have to consider new options - but going back to hiring boats is then a very costly proposition to get back into, the Broads Authority also suddenly loosing toll income and the only winners in the short term might be boat transport firms and brokers!

My gut feeling is it is going to get a lot worse before it improves and action needs taking sooner rather than later.

[Vaughan]

1 hour ago, LondonRascal said:

What I wonder is why was it that things 'took off' for a relatively short space of time - say the late 1960's to the early 1980's where boatyards seemingly could not build boats fast enough for customers to holiday on

Again, I agree totally with your thinking but interestingly, the dates you mention were the other way round!

The really good times for hire boats were the mid 50s. Not long after the war, wonderful boats being built and no competition from foreign holidays. That's why all the main boatyards were beside a railway station. By the late 60s the business took a dive, which is why Jenners were able to buy up so many hire boats and bring them to Thorpe, from big yards, that had decided to "get out of it", such as Landamores, Windboats, Dawncraft, even Jack Powles were selling boats. It's fair to say (and I was there) that if David Millbank had had better finance and cash flow, his business would have succeeded then, and we might even see nearly 200 hire boats in Thorpe, to this day! As it was, the market came back, until the late 70s, and then it went down again, and this time, badly. By the time we got to the early 80s the whole country was in deep recession. But it started to pick up again about 5 years later.

This is why there are those of us who believe the Broads holiday business has 10 year cycles. It goes up for five years, then it goes down, but 5 years later it come up again. This can be put down to co-incidence, but all the same, I see no reason why the Broads should not start to climb back, in the next 5 years. Not just Brexit and the Pound but other world events, will see people wishing to take their holidays nearer to home.

Trouble is, in the old days, we had the River Commissioners, who were always working beside us, to help keep the Broads commercial. Do we have the same co-operation, and "partnership" from the BA?

[JanetAnne]

Leaving the country is now considerably more expensive as well. maybe Brexit will help the hire boats more than we think.

[Baitrunner]

18 minutes ago, JanetAnne said:

Leaving the country is now considerably more expensive as well. maybe Brexit will help the hire boats more than we think.

I agree, but still no where near as expensive as a uk holiday. 

We have had some of these discussions before, but a real life example for you. 

Just booked 8 nights in Corfu for sept 2017.  5* apartment, small friendly hotel, business class flights outbound, water on tap, rubbish collected every day, weather guaranteed, plenty of restaurants within walking distance etc etc for £600 for 2 people. 

Same time to hire a broom captain (it's newish and quite luxurious as an example)  is £1100 for 7 nights. Got to hunt for somewhere to moor, hunt for water every other day, hunt for waste disposal, hunt for a bar/restaurant that might still be open. You get the point  

Now greece may not be everyone's cup of tea, but bear in mind roughing it on a boat ain't either. I know some of us like the basic stuff, but as I have said before we are a minority of the U.K. Holiday paying public. If I didn't have my own boat and leave/money was at a premium, renting a boat on the broads would not be top of my list of holiday destinations. Which is s situation many families are in  

As Vaughan says people's choices are bigger and what they want is different. 

IMHO broads boating is a niche holiday market and we just have to hope people do still want to come and try it. 

I'm not anti hire boat, and genuinely wish the hire companies well, but we have to be realistic as to what people want and expect on an expensive holiday 

[MauriceMynah]

41 minutes ago, Baitrunner said:

Now greece may not be everyone's cup of tea,

Thinks... Greece or Hickling.. Greece or Hickling.... You're right Mark... Greece isn't for everyone!  

[Baitrunner]

I rest my case. Broads boating is a niche market MM ha ha. 

[smellyloo]

Perhaps social media contributes to the decline in interest in the Broads.

Anyone reading the acres of topics on declining moorings and inadequate rubbish clearance, inconsiderate boaters contributing to noise pollution ........ closing pubs and poor hygiene rating might be put off the Broads as a destination.

Personally I think the Broads has improved considerably since the 1960's. The boats are more comfortable the waterways are cleaner and the moorings better maintained.

You simply can't compare a holiday apartment in Greece to a boating holiday on the broads. Many people don't want to fry on a beach in average temperatures between 30 - 40 C. Not to mention the greasy spoon tavernas who I suspect have never heard of a hygeine rating.

[MrBlueSky]

There are many reasons why the Broads are struggling as a holiday destination ,which the continuing closure ,s of Boatyards and Pubs indicate.Smellyloo is correct in saying that anyone reading the various forums would in many cases be deterred from visiting the Broads by the many negative issues that the forums spend so much time discussing.Boat hiring is an expensive holiday and the last thing a potential customer wants to read about is all the negativity.

 In an ideal world there would be double the number of boats available for hire,thereby reducing the price hopefully,from many more yards as used to be the case.To go with this the Broads Authority would have to provide three times the number of available moorings,even if they charge a nominal mooring fee.

Will never happen i know.   

[LondonRascal]

I disagree with Social Media having any negative impact on the Broads. I say this because the majority of users who post on Social Media will do such on Facebook - not Forums. 

During peak season the groups on Facebook swell with their many thousands of collative members sharing many photos and countless comments in a single day over a multitude of topics. Overall they are positive, they are people sharing experiences of where they had gone, photos of the food they have had and drinks they have enjoyed, of sunsets or sunrises, of dogs being cute or dressing up of that big fish they have caught.   You’ll not find deep discussions like this on them and the only real negative commentary will be people complaining of too many photos of food, or someone on deck without a lifejacket. 

If someone is reading a deeper discussion about a declining industry on the likes of this Forum, they likely know only too well the issues it is facing and wider problems (such as rubbish collection) and if they are new to the area and boating there will be just as many positive points to even out the negative that we discuss on here too. 

[TheQ]

1 hour ago, smellyloo said:

You simply can't compare a holiday apartment in Greece to a boating holiday on the broads. Many people don't want to fry on a beach in average temperatures between 30 - 40 C. Not to mention the greasy spoon tavernas who I suspect have never heard of a hygeine rating.

Sadly the MAJORITY look at price  heat and pubs /boozers, nothing else, even on the broads, When I'm out on rescue boat duty the most often asked question from a hire boat  is " how far to the nearest Pub"  or words to that effect.

[MauriceMynah]

And a fine question that is, Mr Q, a fine question.

[Vaughan]

I agree with Robin - again. This is becoming a habit!

 

Surely it is obvious that we are not Internet Trolls? Although we enjoy our conviviality this is a serious forum made up of of lovers of the Broads who are giving opinions backed up, sometimes, by a lifetime of experience.

If we write to the EDP they usually don't print it and if we write to the BA we also get ignored (as I was) so where else can we "vent our spleen"?

At least we are giving our opinions in the genuine interest of maintaining and preserving the place as we know and love it, so that visitors can come to love it too. 

 

[Lastdraft]

I'm not having a pop but I do have to smile at ' Business class flights 'on a short haul flight. You mean the front six rows ? 

[jeffbroadslover]

I have read all the comments with great interest and would like to ask one simple question.

How many members would enjoy the idea of being able to go back to the 60's and 70's when there always seemed to be plenty of moorings available, there were loads of rubbish bins everywhere and the B A managed to do  their job with much less money than they do nowadays?     There were probably many more injuns and less chiefs than there are now 

I cannot remember things like pubs and boatyards closing as often as they seem to nowadays.

jeff 

[Labrador]

I may have missed this, but the most valuable asset that Alphacraft had were the boat mouldings, who if anyone has acquired them? Having retired from the boat industry I'm a little out of touch to the'grapevine'. The big majority of new hirecraft were produced from these moulds. I know who the main interested people were, but never heard an outcome.

[Baitrunner]

1 hour ago, Lastdraft said:

I'm not having a pop but I do have to smile at ' Business class flights 'on a short haul flight. You mean the front six rows ? 

All they had left for the dates and times we wanted. 

We aren't that flush, but a few Avios points goes a long way!!

and the BA lounges in London are quite nice. Glad it's in the way out so we can maximise the hospitality!!!

back on track, don't look at what we like about the Broads, look at what needs to be done to encourage others. I suspect you won't like the results

look at caravan sites. They seem to be on the up. Why do people pay £20+ a night compared to a basic camping and caravan club field site? I know people who only like the latter. More who like the former. I suspect its the facilities and ease of life as you will have most of the mod cons you have at home. And little Johnny will have tv and electricary and maybe wifi so he is blissfully happy. Not all kids like swallows and amazons ( I did by the way). 

Little Johnny is happy, mummy and daddy are happy and it is a holiday all of a sudden. 

Look outside of your own comfort zones and picture what us chavs like on holiday

[Baitrunner]

I will say this about alphacraft having hired their " finest". 

The boats are pretty rough if I'm generous and the moorings are useless as a marina unless you want to be bounced off every time a boat goes in or out. Which is undoubtedly why NYA or NBS have not snapped it up.

[vanessan]

1 hour ago, jeffbroadslover said:

I have read all the comments with great interest and would like to ask one simple question.

How many members would enjoy the idea of being able to go back to the 60's and 70's when there always seemed to be plenty of moorings available, there were loads of rubbish bins everywhere and the B A managed to do  their job with much less money than they do nowadays?     There were probably many more injuns and less chiefs than there are now 

I cannot remember things like pubs and boatyards closing as often as they seem to nowadays.

jeff 

The Broads Authority didn't come into being until 1989, many would probably say that's when things started going downhill! 

[JennyMorgan]

1 hour ago, vanessan said:

The Broads Authority didn't come into being until 1989, many would probably say that's when things started going downhill! 

Others might say that the downhill option kicked in after Professor Aitken Clark, the Authority's first Chief Executive Officer, retired. Good bloke, for a foreigner, he was the one that was behind the Barton Broad renovation.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/7590840/Professor-Aitken-Clark.html