| Since
1973
We
were five men, young at that time. We had eloped from Nautor in
order to start our own boat yard to build the very finest sailboats
in the world together with a group of local talents of the Bosund
region. This we planned to do with a lighter displacement than the
competitors´ boats, not only in order to increase performance,
but also to make life easier, more enjoyable, and we had the idea
that utilizing more modern high-tech materials and methods could
do this. Not fighting head to head with other boat yards but instead
by creating "our own product" for the small niche of very
demanding performance cruising/racer sailors. The years 1973 and
1974 were extremely busy for our new company. Not only did we develop
and make moulds for our first model, but also prior to this or rather
parallel we built our factory facilities from scratch.
It
was the Baltic 46 and we had very positive reactions from "the
crowd" and had good response also from the press. The business,
however, was not as good as it could have been. The world experienced
its first oil crisis in 1973 and this had a negative effect on most
businesses including ours.
In
order to broaden our activities, we added the Baltic 33 (C&C
Design) in 1975. We also built our first Custom (one-off) yacht
in 1975. This was a C&C designed 2-tonner, "Tina I-Punkt".
In total we delivered 15 yachts in 1975, followed by 28 yachts 1976.
The year 1977 was one of the milestones for our company. At the
end of this year Hollming Ltd. (a large Finnish ship builder) purchased
Baltic Yachts and enabled us to increase model development and also
us to do an effective world wide marketing. At this time we also
opened up our own sales office in USA, and started a large marketing
campaign.
At
the end of the 1980:s the yachting market was at a down period and
also the ship building was in a difficult position. This resulted
in a situation where Hollming wanted to get out of the yachting
business and concentrate on their core business. In order to safeguard
Baltic Yachts´ activities we got a group of people together
with the goal to find out if there was enough interest in order
to take over the Baltic Yachts activities and to continue the tradition
of building Baltics in Bosund. 34 of us started our own company
again in 1991.
This
was again a milestone for our company and marketing and production
of Baltic sailing yachts could go on. In the beginning of the "take
over" the market was bad and there was a strong need to make
our company smaller in size and slimming the administrative side.
However we had enough old customers and friends who believed in
our mission and had faith in us and very much due to this we managed
to get through these difficult times.
We
have now been running Baltic Yachts on our own all since 1991. During
these years we have had a substantial technology development and
raised the quality level plus increased our custom division activities
substantially. In other words we have been doing well and we certainly
look very positively into the future.
So
many things have happened during these years. We have developed
our company to one of the best known in our business and to one
reaching the highest quality levels as well as using the highest
technology. And best of all, the future looks as exciting as ever
before!
The yachts
that we produced tell about our past and give some information on
the development through the years.
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