One year after Italian yacht maker Ferretti Group was taken over by Chinese manufacturing Weichai Group, results are positive in terms of resource sharing and industrial integration, the Ferretti Group CEO Ferruccio Rossi told Xinhua in a recent interview.
The Ferretti Group, a world leader in the luxury yachting sector with a portfolio of eight highly prestigious brands, presented this week the Ferretti 960, the new 29.20-meter-long flagship built by its historical brand Ferretti Yachts.
The new flagship offers "impressive habitability and comfort" compared to other models in its class, Rossi noted. Among the most innovative aspects, he indicated a garage with a flood part so that the tender can easily slide into the water with no need for any davit as well as an open space salon "incredibly large for a boat of this size."
The CEO said that customers from emerging countries require that yachts are designed "more specifically as a unique platform to share success in life with their family and friends as well as develop business networks."
In particular since the beginning of the global economic crisis, which especially affected the Western world, the Asia-Pacific region has been standing out as a new market for yacht consumption thanks to the growth of social affluence and the development of marine tourism, he added.
In this changed scenario, the integration between the Ferretti Group and the Weichai Holding Group Co., Ltd., one of China's largest manufacturing companies and now majority stakeholder with a 75-percent stake, was a strategic choice, the CEO stressed.
When the Ferretti Group was facing financial difficulties at the height of the crisis, it decided to seek a partnership to accelerate its international growth, and the Weichai Group made its capital available to help the group enter new markets and improve its competitiveness, Rossi said.
The Chinese partner offered strengthened financial solidity and long-term vision, from sales channels to follow-up services, to the well-known Italian brand which continues to be characterized by high-quality technology and products.
Following last year's takeover, in the first half of 2013 the Ferretti Group has doubled the overall turnover of 2012, Rossi added, and is expected to reach breakeven of around 500 million euros (650 million U.S. dollars) by the end of this year.
Besides to Italy and the U.S., the Ferretti Group is now also present in China, through its subsidiary Ferretti Group Asia Pacific Ltd., based in China's Hong Kong, as well as a representative and promotion office in Shanghai.
"We believe that the Asia-Pacific region will witness rapid growth in the next years, ," Rossi said, adding that it has "the potential to become the third yachting hotspot after the Mediterranean and Caribbean ones."
Presently the Asia-Pacific region only accounts for around 10 percent of the Ferretti Group overall turnover but forecasts say it could reach 30 percent by 2018. "We are discussing very important orders and delivering various models of yachts to Chinese clients," he noted.
What he defined a "global approach," or a combination of global reliability and local customization, plays a key role for brand building in the new markets.
"I participated for the first time in Asian yachting fairs and realized that though knowledge of the sector is often still embryonic, there is a strong perception of the intangible experience revealed by a yacht, which is very much about extraordinary emotions," Rossi said.
The Italian part is closely collaborating with the Chinese new colleagues in a passionate process of cultural integration where different strength points are joined together for common development, he said.
