Blohm+Voss' Fred Van Beers On Forging A New Future

By Paul Joseph

It is exciting times for German builder Blohm + Voss and in particular Fred Van Beers, who was appointed as the new CEO at the start of 2015.

Among his remit has been the task of forging a new future for Blohm + Voss, which includes building on its formidable brand by entering the field of semi-custom yacht construction.

We sat down with Mr Van Beers on the first day of the 2015 Monaco Yacht Show to find out more about these grand plans.

“I would say there’s been a continuation of what has been there for a 138 years now,” he says. “It’s very exciting indeed. I started six months ago in this new role. I knew Blohm & Voss for 20 years already in my previous jobs and it’s a great brand with a great history on which we’re building a new future now.

This future is definitely about mega yachting in both new build and refit and life cycle support so we look at the total life cycle future on yachting with Blohm + Voss.”

At last year’s Monaco Yacht Show, Blohm + Voss launched its new BV80 semi-custom project and we asked Mr Van Beers how this project has fared so far.

“She was launched last year during the show as a concept and ID of how we want to put semi-custom under the Blohm + Voss brand on the market,” he says, “and we got a great response from the market to the level where we have started now cutting steel to build a few sections.

“Why? Because we feel it’s of utmost importance to further shorten delivery time which we can do now to a 2.5 year period. It’ semi-custom so a lot of room for customisation in there and we try to be very flexible in that.

You can watch the full video interview with Mr Van Beers above this article.

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By Paul Joseph
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