Farewell Brooms

[Labrador]

Where is all this speculation coming from that they want to build on the site? They owned a site on the edge of the village which they wanted to build a modern boat building facility on. Things took a downturn and this is the site that is being sold for development.  The riverside site is still required if the want to concentrate on repair, maintenance, etc.

[ranworthbreeze]

The Riverside site of Brooms includes a small number of companies who rent, lease or own properties on the site such as Custom Craft and the chap that does the window repairs etc.

I know of a few people that have already set up their own businesses after leaving Broom's over the last year, maybe it could be said that they saw the writing on the wall.

With the 90 plus trains going past every day and the fact that they have to blow their whistles/horns on leaving Brundall station as a warning for the unmanned crossing for access to Bells Marina it is doubtful that housing is a good option for the site. I would also assume that there will be another warning when the Brundall unmanned crossing comes into effect?

Regards

Alan

 

 

[Guest]

Also all the land beyond the railway line is heavily susceptible to flooding

[JawsOrca]

Here's the Brooms press release from yesterday.  Via BOC.

Press Release 21 March 2018

Broom Restructuring for the Future

Broom  has announced plans to restructure its operations into a leading leisure operator on the Southern Norfolk Broads.

Over recent years the market to build and sell boats has changed significantly, reflecting low customer demand, overseas competition and rising costs.

Against this backdrop, the shareholders have continued to invest, with the company becoming one of the best fleet hire operators on the Broads. This has led to a strategic decision to focus on the growing leisure part of their operations and to discontinue boat building. This will sadly involve the loss of some jobs.

Broom, which employs some of the finest craftspeople along with a heritage stretching back to 1898, remains committed to developing its excellent marina , hire fleet and service operation situated immediately adjacent to the Brundall station, a home to many private boats and its hire fleet, along with workshops performing maintenance and repairs.
 

[ExSurveyor]

Perhaps Brooms are going to expand the hire fleet and offer moorings,  enough people have said that more hire boats need to be based in the south.

I can't really understand the immediate rush to assume housing will be put on the site,  it is far from ideal as a development site.

[JennyMorgan]

Maybe not housing but some form of second home, anything that doesn't cost the earth to build but demands a high price. We are talking vulture capitalists!

[Chelsea14Ian]

One thing for sure I would like  to know exactly what's happening.Very much doubt I will buy a brooms or for that matter a Haines.what is certain is during the season I use brooms often and hope to continue to.For them as a company I would suggest they lay out the future  sooner rather then later.

[Labrador]

36 minutes ago, Chelsea14Ian said:

One thing for sure I would like  to know exactly what's happening.Very much doubt I will buy a brooms or for that matter a Haines.what is certain is during the season I use brooms often and hope to continue to.For them as a company I would suggest they lay out the future  sooner rather then later.

They have, in their press release. They are discontinuing boat building and developing all other aspects of the business. As usual on here speculation is running riot.

[MauriceMynah]

Spot on! I was thinking about buying a brand new 45' Broom. I'm damned if I will now!

[Hylander]

M M have you won the lottery then?

[Regulo]

No, he wants to sweep the bottom of his garden from his living room.

[marshman]

Perhaps the scepticism arises from the fact that I suspect, if you looked at the original statement when they took the Company over, it proved to be a lot of hot air and promises not fulfilled!!!!!

[Chelsea14Ian]

2 hours ago, MauriceMynah said:

Spot on! I was thinking about buying a brand new 45' Broom. I'm damned if I will now!

Perhaps a 40' instead. 

[Guest]

2 hours ago, MauriceMynah said:

Spot on! I was thinking about buying a brand new 45' Broom. I'm damned if I will now!

Here's one for you MM spotted 2 days ago 

[Labrador]

2 hours ago, marshman said:

Perhaps the scepticism arises from the fact that I suspect, if you looked at the original statement when they took the Company over, it proved to be a lot of hot air and promises not fulfilled!!!!!

I don't think they realised that the sort of market they were in, building wise, was about to take a downturn. Some like Sunseeker survived with massive cash injection, others like Fairline went under and the likes of Brooms struggled on. Without the cash there's not much you can do.

Interestingly Oysters have employed the services of the guy who turned Sunseeker round. It doesn't matter how full your order books are, if you can't build cost effectively your stuffed. You can have orders of £80m, but if you cannot make a decent margin on them, what's the point?

[teadaemon]

28 minutes ago, Labrador said:

You can have orders of £80m, but if you cannot make a decent margin on them, what's the point?

This is a very good point. I did see somewhere that for a particular year (I think 2016, but can't remember exactly) Oyster Yachts had revenues of over £40 million, but a net profit of only ~£100k, giving a profit margin of ~0.25%.

[Labrador]

Quite, that's why the Dutch investors pulled the plug.

[NeilB]

I'm sure this didn't help either  http://oysterstory.info/

 

[Labrador]

Don't  forget this website was set up on the instigation of the yachts Russian owner, so some of it's content maybe slightly biased from the point of view as to how Oyster handled it. Not tht that detracts from that fact it was bad design/construction.

Sorry, this is going off thread.

[JohnK]

Even allowing for a bit of bias and exaggeration that’s a shocking story.