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Poles Apart!

An Article by Southern Motorboats’ own Tom Bettle, following his visit to Jeanneau’s wholly-owned shipyard in Poland

Whilst it may seem that the entire manual workforce of Poland is either lagging your loft, laying your block paving or re plumbing your radiators, I can categorically say they are not. There is more to Polish life than landscape gardening the suburbs of Surbiton - and for those still in Poland there is far more to life than growing turnips and cabbages!

Life is changing for our European cousins and we boaters can benefit big time with superb value for money boats that are as good as any from anywhere else!

During the years of communism, boating was not really a way to spend your weekends. Massive shipyards worked for the benefit of the government and it was at one such shipyard in Gdansk that Lech Walesa was a member of the illegal strike committee in 1970.

This strike ended in the bloody deaths of over 40 people who were killed by riot police, but out of tragedy came the slow but inevitable downfall of communism in 1989 and 1990.

With Lech Walesa as the new president of Poland, a free market economy began to develop and in amongst the turnip fields and forests of the countryside, new entrepreneurs grabbed the opportunity by constructing factories of all shapes and sizes and capitalising on the leisure market.

It was here at this Gdansk Shipyard that Solidarity was born. The yard is still operating today, just now in a free market economy...

The Baltic coast of Poland is steeped in maritime history. From medieval times, right through communism and up to the present day, boat-building is going from strength to strength. The first boats for the European leisure market began to come off the new production lines in the early 90’s and now, manufacturers big and small often have at least one centre or major contractor based in Poland.

In 1992, Ostroda Yachts started sub-contracting for boating giant Jeanneau. In this first year they built just 50 boats for the company, but the relationship was successful and for the next nine years more boats and models were produced from this growing boatyard.

All boats are delivered to the global dealer network by factory organised transport.

In 2001, Jeanneau purchased, and now wholly own, Ostroda Yachts and production has been massively ramped up. Today, all models under eight metres in length are proudly produced for Jeanneau here and the company is now the second-largest employer in the town of Ostroda. The production capacities are immense, with over 14 boats coming off the line every day and plans are in place to double that capacity by 2012!

I own a Jeanneau. My own Merry Fisher 695 looks after me well and I am always trying to compare other brands to her, but in my rather biased opinion, nothing comes close. In my own view, everything seems better put together, tougher and more solid, with what appears to be high-quality fixtures and attention to detail.

It is truly hands on work. Engineers fit trim and dashboard veneers.

Yes I am biased - I also sell Jeanneau and have done so since standing on the back of a 695 at Southampton Boat Show in 2002 where I asked for a job! As both a salesman and an owner, I wanted to know if my opinion and sales pitch were true, so I jumped at the opportunity to visit Ostroda Yachts to find out a few of the secrets and differences between the competing brands.

Jeanneau’s Global Brand Manager, Merry de la Poeze and Piotr Jasionowski, President of the Board at Ostroda, took a day out of their busy schedules to show me around the whole factory and WOW, it’s simply huge - with production lines stretching hundreds of metres and warehouses and stores spread across acres and acres of space.

As a Jeanneau salesman, I cut straight to the chase and asked Piotr to explain how the Jeanneau build process differed from others. Piotr suggested that many other brands are still using older technology from the 1980’s, whereas the technology at Ostroda Yachts was the same across all of Jeanneau’s European plants. Technology is shared and systems are fully integrated, ensuring that boats are built one way and to a set standard.

To prove a point, he took me along one of the main production lines where temperature controlled resin is fed via pumps to workers who are hand-laying fibreglass matting. Apparently, some manufacturers are spraying the fibreglass onto the moulds, which can result in an uneven layup. The downside to hand-laying is that it is incredibly labour-intensive, with several people working on a single boat at any one time. The plus side is the instant benefit in quality!

All Jeanneau boats are hand laid. This is supposed to be far better for quality control, but is labour intensive.	Downtown Gdansk shows off it's maritime heritage with a modern bulk carrier and a trawler tied up alongside the Maritime Museum.

Quality control doesn’t stop there, checks and processes are in place right the way through the build cycle and boats don’t make the shrink wrap line until all have been passed. It was also pointed out that many other brands are still using third party contracting for their Polish manufacturing, which in itself isn’t a problem, but it can generate quality control issues.

The whole factory was a revelation, from the racks upon racks of fixtures and fittings, the horizon-dipping production lines and the test tank to the enormous rows of boats awaiting transport. This is a huge operation, but attention to detail is paramount. To my mind, our Polish cousins don’t simply make great builders, they make great boats too. In my opinion, Poland appears the perfect base for many boat-building manufacturers and head and shoulders above them all is Jeanneau at Ostroda Yachts.

They are simply Poles Apart!