About Us
Baltic Yachts is the world’s leading boatbuilding yard specialising in high quality carbon fibre custom yachts.
AN IMPRESSIVE REPUTATION
Baltic Yachts has built an impressive and highly respected reputation for building a new breed of multi-role yachts performing to the highest standards both as luxury cruisers and successful racing yachts competing on the global superyacht regatta circuit. Combining the latest carbon fibre engineering with top build quality from our skilled Finnish workforce, yachts like the Baltic 112 Nilaya, the Baltic 115 Nikata, the Baltic 108 WinWin are prize winning examples of how performance and luxury accommodation can be successfully combined in a modern yacht. The Baltic 116 Doryan, the Baltic 152 Pink Gin and the Baltic 107 Inukshuk, another prize winner, are just some examples of recent bespoke cruising yachts built and designed to a standard second to none.
ICONIC YACHTS
Visione, the Baltic 147, considered by many to be ahead of her time and arguably the fast yacht of her generation, was launched in 2002, but is still winning regattas at the highest level today thanks partly to a programme of upgrading carried out by Baltic Yachts’ Service and Refit. At 59.90m the high performance, retro-styled ketch Hetairos, launched in 2011, is in a class of her own, a highly specialised cruising yacht with world girdling capability and an impressive turn of speed on the race course. These yachts, together with the Baltic 152 Pink Gin and her successor the 175ft Pink Gin, are stand-out vessels in the world of superyachting, illustrating how Baltic Yachts continues to lead the way in carbon fibre engineering and build technology.
FINNISH BOAT BUILDING HERITAGE IN OSTROBOTHNIA
In the land of a thousand lakes, boats and ships have always been fundamental for effective communication and transport. By the 16th century, the west coast of Finland, particularly the Ostrobothnia region, was an important centre for boat building. On a 1529 map you can read “Hic fabricator navalis”, “Here ships are built”, and when the Swedish crown reorganised its army and needed carpenters for their shipyard, they chose artisans from our area because of their reputation. From 1765 to 1810, Jakobstad was the biggest producer of ships in Finland. This nurtured a highly skilled local workforce and is the reason why Jakobstad became a natural location for the embryonic Baltic Yachts when it was founded in 1973.
FAMILY SPIRIT
In 1973 five young men left a respected Finnish yacht builder to start their own business. Their aim was to build the finest sailing boats in the world and to achieve this they employed a group of indigenous craftsmen from the Bosund region of Finland. Top quality and comfortable cruising yachts with racing potential were the main ingredients of what they set out to achieve. Importantly, they recognised that building yachts with lighter displacement than competing products would not only increase performance, but also make life easier and more enjoyable for their clients. They did this by using materials and manufacturing technology never previously seen in boat building.
INTERNATIONAL SUCCESS STORY
The first Baltic was unveiled to the world at the Hamburg Boat Show in October 1974. It was the Baltic 46, which received a very positive reaction from potential clients and the press. The Hamburg Boat Show was the start of Baltic Yachts’ international expansion and the export business is still our largest business segment. With traditional yachting hubs centred in Europe, the Mediterranean, along the American seaboards and the Caribbean, there was a need to expose the company’s expertise and thinking to the wider yachting community. In 1977 Hollming Ltd., a large Finnish ship builder, purchased Baltic Yachts and enabled us to drive forward our model development and to undertake effective worldwide marketing. It also meant we could open our first sales office in the USA.
AN OUTSTANDING CRUISING EXPERIENCE
A comfortable cruising experience has always been a key sales pitch and driver in our design. We want to make complex yachts easy to sail. We put great emphasis on user-friendliness in our technical design process and seek maximum comfort in our interior design. We are known for listening to our customers and recognising their needs and we try to make the impossible possible. Easy sailing systems, light but strong construction and minimum noise levels are key characteristics of all of our boats and our accommodation design will always match the individual tastes of our customers. There’s a choice of our in-house designers, who are capable of any style request, or working with external stylists and interior designers. We work with a wide range of naval architects who in turn co-operate with our in-house design team.
OUR COMPOSITE REVOLUTION
Ever since the company was founded in 1973, Baltic Yachts has used sandwich or composite construction for hulls and decks. This well proven technique involves the use of unidirectional fibre laminates in the outer skins bonded to a core of foam or other lightweight material. It provides an incredibly strong, stiff and light structure with excellent insulation properties. This system, which is constantly upgraded as new materials, such as carbon fibre, reach the market, can be tailored to suit any boat or customer’s wishes. Our in-house knowledge of composites and on-going research and development enables us to always make the combination of fibres fit for purpose.
ADVANTAGES OF CARBON FIBRE
The introduction of carbon fibre revolutionised yacht construction because it meant the size of load bearing laminates could be reduced due to its strength compared to other fibres and its inherent lack of weight. The fibres in a laminate, be they glass or carbon, exist to take most of the loads the structure as a whole is exposed to – they are the load carrying elements of a laminate. Resin creates a bond for the fibres; in other words, it glues them together and keeps them in column when they are under load. Carbon fibre is made of graphite fibres providing excellent stiffness, high tensile and compressive strength. We combine carbon fibre with the most suitable complementary fibres to ensure lightness, which in turn enhances performance or speed. Our composites also possess highly efficient insulation properties.
RACING PERFORMANCE
Another fundamental aim of Baltic Yachts has been to combine top quality and comfortable cruising performance with racing potential. Key to this is achieving a lighter displacement than the competitors, not only in order to increase speed, but also to make the boat easier to sail and life afloat more enjoyable. It is no secret that our boats tend to achieve top rankings in regattas. We put every effort into making sure our customers have the best hardware at their disposal to win any race!
TECHNICAL INNOVATION
Modern yachts demand a plethora of complex high-tech systems. Everything, from steering and anchoring to alarm systems and acoustic insulation, is carefully and continually improved so that the sailing experience is as stress-free and as comfortable as possible. Our Research and Development team is constantly working on new projects to improve each system using the latest thinking and hardware. Baltic Yachts is renowned for its success in this area, with a long list of innovations to its credit. Fire resistant glassfibre reinforced ceramic insulation in engine rooms to save weight; retractable propulsion systems to remove resistance and improve performance and our forced feedback remote steering to improve the sailing experience, are just a few recent development. We are always trying to find ways to make the impossible possible!
QUALITY ASSURED AND RECOGNISED
We take great pride in maintaining top quality standards in all aspects of the business, from the yacht building process itself and in-house design, to sales and marketing. We were the first yard in the world to achieve the standards required by the certificates set out below.
In our Jakobstad waterside build facility and in Bosund, we have set new standards of occupational health and safety based on constantly improving shop floor work practices.
ISO 9001:2015 Quality Management System Standard
ISO 14001:2015 Environmental Management System Standard
OHSAS 18001:2007 Occupational Health and Safety Management System Standard