UK shipyard opens in Discovery Shipyard’s former premises

Ocean Shipyard Limited has taken over the premises in Southampton that formerly housed Discovery Shipyard, with Discovery’s former general manager heading up the new yard. Ocean Shipyard is specialising in the build of the Southerly 42, 48 and Bluewater 50 cat – craft all previously produced by Discovery.

According to Ocean Shipyard: ‘Ocean Shipyard was started very recently after the sad demise of the Discovery Shipyard. Ocean Shipyard is the ambition of Steve Edwards, formally the general manager of the Discovery Shipyard.’

Companies House lists Binti Marine Holdings as ‘persons with significant control’ of Ocean Shipyard. Werner Schnaebele, the previous owner/shareholder of Discovery who withdrew investment for Discovery in December with the yard naming its liquidators in January 2022, was listed as a director of Binti Marine Holdings until 13 January 2022. On 13 January 2022, Steve Edwards was appointed director of Binti Marine Holdings.

Ocean Shipyard did not respond to MIN when asked if Werner Schnaebele still has a connection with Binti Marine Holdings and/or Ocean Shipyard.

In a statement, Ocean Shipyard says that Edwards’ intention is to ‘offer shipyard services to other marine and non-marine businesses and clients, in particular the capability of Ocean Shipyard’s well-equipped joinery and refit facilities, that has already received a great response from the market. In addition, Ocean Shipyard has secured the exclusive rights to build Southerly and Bluewater yachts with full access to all the intellectual property and tooling required. This means that the yard itself is a stand alone business – it does not rely solely on new yacht builds to survive the ebbs and flows of what can be a difficult market.

‘Having two strings to the Ocean bow adds strength to the business, but more importantly provides job security for the highly skilled and experienced people that are the real heart and strength of the enterprise.’ 

An anonymous industry source who worked with Discovery told MIN: “When we got invited there [Ocean Shipyard] for a meeting – to wander in and it is all the same people, minus some individuals. It wasn’t the case of ‘this really is one person left from the old company’.”