You know, a company that's got this young blood in it and is so hungry to move forward, you know, that's something that's really good to see in the industry. This is the Ben Taylor podcast, the home of Marine Industry Insights. Enjoy. Hi, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the Ben Taylor podcast. This is part of a series designed to profile the Australian yachting scene and the industry. We're here in the Amex garden to hear a little bit from all the stakeholders around this part of the industry. So I'm here with Kevin. Nice to see you, Kevin. Nice to meet you. How are you? Very, very well, thank you. I'm enjoying Australia. I love the industry here. We've been incredibly welcoming. I think it's an exciting industry. I think it's got huge potential. So it's awesome kind of learning about that and seeing how everything works. Yeah. Can we start by having like a little bit of background? Who are you? What have you done? And what's your kind of mission? What's your thing? So basically, I'll just start with, you know, what the Australian industry and, you know, where it started, because people think it's, you know, something new down here, but it's not. It's been going down the straight since the 80s, the 1980s. And it started on two sides of the country. It started in the West with a company called Ocean Fast, and it started here on the East Coast with a company called Lloyd Ships. So you'll pretty much find that all the stalwarts that are still in the industry pretty much either came from out of those two companies back in the day. And, you know, I started my career off at Ocean Fast back in the late 80s and was lucky enough to be involved with who we consider the grandfather of super yachting, which is John Bannenberg. He was, you know, he was, we were doing stuff back in those days that, you know, basically people said we couldn't do. Right. And it hadn't been done before. Hadn't been done before. We were building, you know, 30, 40 meter vessels, aluminium, jet powered. Which is? 35 knots, massive windows. Was that on the larger side back in the 1980s? Yeah. That was some of the biggest boats in the world. Yeah, they were big boats. And we pretty much started, they pretty much started with American clients. And these guys wanted to get to the Bahamas and places like that, so they needed shallow draft. Right. And they also wanted to get there fast. So out of Miami, Fort Lauderdale, places like that, straight to the Bahamas, you know, they were in very, very quick boats. Those vessels came out of really the cray fishing era that was in WA at the time, building fast cray boats that could get in and out of shallow water from fishing up north and places like the Abrolhos. Right. So you used influences and designs from that kind of use case and then applied it into the recreational side. That's exactly what happened. This will suit the needs. They took it from there and they put it into the super yachting market, which nobody called them super yachts back in those days, I don't think. I first went to WA in 1987 for the America's Cup in Fremantle. And I saw a vessel that was on the water called Part Six, and it was this 35 meter Ocean Fast. I'd never seen anything like it in my life. At the time, I was living in Victoria and I decided I was going to move to WA and I was going to work for this company, Ocean Fast. And that's where it all started for me. So I was in the west, based in the west for 28 years. Went from Ocean Fast to a startup interior fit out company, which was called Super Yacht Interiors, which then morphed into its own boat building company as Evolution Yachts. Right. Okay. I now know a different company, or it sounds like a different company called Super Yacht Interiors, got a big base in Dubai. You can do a lot there, but different things. Different things. Everyone's right. But that evolved into a boat building company. Our company evolved into a boat building company called Evolution Yachts. And we built that up over the years, over 10 years to about 150 employees. We produced three new boats out of there, a 110 foot monohull, a 80 foot monohull, and a 135 foot catamaran, all luxury vessels. And then we did a number of refits as well. And what happened was 2008 came along and hit the boat building industry pretty hard. So we had a number of orders, which all went away because there was no more finance at all. So had to rethink things and wound the company up and end up doing a four year stint in China, set up a facility up there to manufacture production boats. And then once I finished that contract in 2013, I decided I was going to move over to this side of the coast. I've got family over here. So you're based out of Brisbane, Gold Coast, Sydney, or? I've got Gold Coast. Gold Coast. Yeah, it's beautiful. Beautiful. And so what's the mission there? This is now Shearline. So no, yeah, Shearline is very new. Shearline's a new company. I actually ran Gold Coast, Sydney Marina for quite a few years. And that was there yesterday. It's incredible. So I ran that for a few years with Trenton Gay and Pat Gay, the Gay family. Finished up there, went back into project management. I've been project management for the last few years. And now I've taken the role with this new company, Shearline, who's a startup company. I don't like the word startup. It's a new company. OK. It's been operating out of the marina for about 12 months on a specific project based there. It's a sailing yacht, and it's been a very high-tech fit and finish. What's the mission? So if you're kind of profiling Shearline, what does it do? So the mission is these are young guys, and they've got the appetite to build a company, to build a proper boat building company. But it's an OEM mission. It's to build them from scratch. It's not just refit. It's everything. From the ground up. It's everything. So at the moment, the capacity is naval architecture and in-house design and engineering. Right. Good place to start. Yeah. We've put in three-axis and five-axis CNC machines, which is the only ones in the area. So we have the capacity there on the three-axis to cut parts, flat packs for furniture, bits and pieces, things like that. On the five-axis, we can carve plugs and molds out of that. So these guys are working on the high-end level with AI and design criteria, different design package criteria, Fusion, Rhino, all these 3D models. So how do you go from what it's doing today into building the whole thing? What's the structure there? How do you do that? Step-by-step. So the start is we've got the capacity there for CNC, five and three. Also, we do rapid prototyping with 3D printers. And then we've got a fit-out department. We've just basically started up. So full fit-out capability. Right. So you make all these different departments that can operate independently, but can also come together. And we've also got boat builders on staff, which are FRP-based, GRP-based, but they've done a lot of high-tech work, carbon, Kevlar, those sorts of fibers. So it's quite a technically-based company. But I've found over the years, especially on the East Coast, where it's lost its capacity for really new builds, big new builds. And people are, you know, they've got no appetite left for that sort of risk anymore. And there's so much refit work here that they've all evolved into smaller companies and they're doing refit to the nth degree. Yeah. So from a strategic point of view, having a boat builder on the East Coast of Australia, you're saying that makes a lot of sense. It does make a lot of sense. The refit scene, I mean, I've been to a series of yards throughout this tour and it's there at capacity. There's problems like we don't have enough cash to fund the infrastructure development. It'll take time, but everything we've got is full, it's at capacity. So you kind of go one step further and say, well, let's build the whole damn thing here. Yeah. Infrastructure here in Australia is still an issue. We don't have the infrastructure for large vessels. We can do on water. In my time with GCCM, we brought up, you know, vessels up to 72 metres on water. We've done paint on water. You know, we've done as much as we can on water. We've proved that we've got the capacity to do that, but we can't get them out of the water, which is an issue. I do believe now that there is a company that's revived the dry dock in Brisbane, which will mean that we can't get large vessels dry docked there. It's not government owned, which is unfortunate, but it's a private company. So I guess there'll be some negotiations there with the company, depending on what they want to do with the dry dock. Obviously they've got plans. And I think it's probably based mainly, it could be very much based around military work, which is sort of, that's the catchphrase these days, even for the West. They do a huge amount of commercial, fishing and military. Mainly military in the West, yeah. Military and probably some offshore stuff as well, for the industries, which is, it's a hard gig, but it's where the governments are, you know, putting their money, I guess, at the end of the day. But the East Coast, you know, we've got plans to put through the Gay family for a new yard. I would have thought you would have heard of that yesterday. The Titan yard, which is south of Gold Coast, Sydney, Marina and Boatworks at the moment. And Boatworks, I've done a fantastic job with their yard. It's fantastic, but it's really a 40 metre yard max. Right. So as the boats get bigger. As the boats get bigger, you've got overseas vessels coming in. You need more. And that's the focus of Titan, right? It's for the large yachts, it's ready for the progression that we're probably going to see over the next 5, 10 years. But for Titan to work properly, we need depths in the river. So we need dredging, which we've been in talks with government for many, many years. But if for Titan, for the infrastructure, for the investment from the Gay family into that yard, which is significant, it's probably 100 million plus. They need water, they need depth. Yeah, absolutely. Because at the moment, all we can bring up to the... That's a limiting factor. If you can't float it to the yard, then it's not going to happen. MSQ are avoiding anything above 50 metres. Okay. So they bring them up. Yeah. Same in the Brisbane River, but Brisbane River's got depth, but the Coomera River is 3m LAT, and they want 500ml of water under the keel. So they're happy to bring up on 3.5m, 3.5m tide, a 3m vessel, basically. Working with MSQ has been fantastic. They've really gone out of their way to help. Yeah. They've been fantastic to the industry, but they can only do what they can do, for safety reasons. Yeah. Right. So we know we can get vessels up there. I've heard the story, oh, you can't get them to go around the corner when they're too big. Well, we know 72m goes around corners. Yeah. Because we've had it up there. You've been there. It was, of course, the vessel Dragonfly. It is a shallow draft vessel. Okay, yeah. But we know it's 72m long, right? Yeah, yeah. So we're talking about going around corners. Yeah. And so are you pretty confident all this will happen? I think it has to. Right. If the government's prepared to stand by their word, and they want the value that can come with the industry. Yeah, if you want that growth, you want to capitalise on it. They need to do it. Yeah. They just need to get it done. It does actually make an awful lot of sense as well. Because I mean, sometimes the vision of yachting from the general public is, you know, extravagant, elitist wealth, and it's just kind of silly. But actually, if you look in the background, if you look at the economic impact, it's the level of employment, the money that comes in, and so all those local businesses, it's huge. It's huge. Like it makes a lot of sense for government to get behind the industry. And we're talking about an export industry that we bring to the country. Yeah, true. You've got international owners, commissioners, boatbuilders, anything like that, or big refits. Yeah, it's all exports. It's all loaded cash coming into the economy. Yeah. I mean, when they get to the shipyard, they basically bleed cash. See, these are all these government guys right here now. Look at them. Have a look at them. Hi, guys. You all right? So from Shearline's perspective, what's the mission going forward? What kind of timescale, what are you hoping happens? The company is on a mission to move forward rapidly at this point. We're seven years away from the Olympic Games. Yeah. Seven years is not going to take long to go, and there's a lot of set up. There's a lot to be done. A lot of training. There's a lot of training involved. Fortunately for us, there is good training associations around. We're working with Griffith University. We're working with companies like Patek, which do FRP-based products, GRP-based products, fiber products. Yeah. We're working with TAFE. We're working with all these companies. We need training. We need twofold. We need apprentice training, but we also need to probably retrain tradesmen that have already got tickets. Yeah. So it's all right saying, well, we've got seven years from now to the Olympic Games. It's not enough. There is so much to be done. We should have started three years ago. Yeah, absolutely. I'm sure we'll be saying that in three years time as well. We should have got on with this. Yeah, no. But it is achievable. It is a worthwhile mission to pursue and really get behind. It is 100% worthwhile for Queensland. I mean, it's already the big player in the industry. Yeah. In Australia. Yes, I made the most of it. You know, we have an amazing area that's been set aside by the council and designated marine-only. So all the businesses in there are marine-based. I think there's probably like 6,000 people that work in that area. It's a tiny little area. You've beaten it. And it's just chop-a-block and it's all marine-based. It's all everything to do with marines right there. So if you come, it's so easy for the vessels. They pull up, untold businesses that they can deal with. They don't need to go anywhere. Yeah, yeah. They're going to have 20 businesses down to their boat in a day if they're prepared to do that. There's not a lot of places that do that. I mean, Lauderdale Marine Centre is probably one. Okay. In Port Lauderdale. In the US, yeah, yeah. In Europe, there's some great yards. They seem to be sailed slightly differently. But they are closed yards. Yeah. So you don't talk to anyone. You talk to the- You go to the yard and you go, we need all this done and then that's it. That's it. Rather than kind of being flexible and saying, well, if we've got a better supplier that we want to use, then it's compensative. Yeah, no worries. Give us the keys. See you later. We'll call you when we're done. I like that. That's the way it goes. You know, Gold Coast City Marina, Boatworks, Rivergate, the yard, they're fairly flexible yards, flexible places to work. Yeah. Of course, the Gold Coast has got the majority. Now, you've probably got, I don't know, let's say- We've got more together right now. 200 businesses between the yard, Gold Coast City Marina, and Boatworks. Yeah, for those that don't know, it's like a town that is a couple of shipyards, but within the yards. We did a tour going on a coach, driving through it, and you're like, all right, there's a supplier, there's a different supplier, there's a different supplier, and it operates like a village job. Yeah, you kind of put a boat in the middle of it, and everyone's like, right, I need this, I need that, and it's- Well, that was the- But it's an open yard, so it's- The shipyard isn't there controlling, saying, you will use this supplier, and this is what you have to use. It's like an open market, it's just- You've got autonomy to do, run the vessel as you wish. You can hire a project manager, you can do it yourself, you can do whatever you really want there. Yeah, and you've got a lot of resources. Within reason. There's still OHS issues and different things there you've got to adhere to. Otherwise, people would be dying in droves. Yeah, it'd be dangerous. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so you don't want that either, so to a point, but you've got freedom. Okay, and what's the message that you want to give to the international audience, the international industry? What's the key thing that you're working on that you- The world to know. We're not new. We've been here a long time. We have the skills to do it. We've proved it before. Our skills are as good as any other countries in the world, and better than most. It's a great place to be. It's a great- Crew love it, so you haven't got a crew sitting in the- You've got like, why on earth am I here? For seven months a year. I got into your team to go to some nice places, and they're looking around going, yeah, this is why I'm here, because we saw the mega yacht berth by South Port Yacht Club. One of the big pitching points is for it, right? You've got a big old berth up to, I think it's 135-meter boats can go there, but then all the crew, they literally get a surfboard under their arm, walk across a little patch of land, took a couple hundred meters, and they surf it. You're like, well, that's going to be a happy crew. That's better than being stuck in a yard, looking around going, there's just grinders around here. Surfers paradise, they've got all the bars and places they like to go and hang out and just let their hair down and have a little party. At the back there, you've got the scarf at the back there, where you've got wonderful little businesses and great places to hike and go for trial rides and do all that sort of stuff. Yeah, and for the international owners, they've got the Aussie cruising grounds, got South Pacific Islands. It's a massive, massive port. Two international airports, each end of the Gold Coast. You've got Brisbane, and then you've got Gold Coast Airport. You're an hour and a half drive from places like Byron Bay, which are world-renowned. It's an absolute beautiful place to be. So crew are happy. Everybody's happy. You can change crew out. You can do all these things. Plus, you can pull up in that mega berth, and you've got 200 businesses at your disposal. You can call them up. Yes, you've got the support. South Port Yacht Club are very supportive of the industry within reason. You can't paint a boat there, but you can do a whole bunch of servicing, and you've got great access. Yeah, you're far from just being out on Anchorage, just going, like, ooh, I hope we've got enough resource here. Yeah. You can do engine servicing, generators, interior bits and pieces, detailing, take work to a point. It's got to be controlled, because it's in the yacht club. Yeah, but you can do it. You can do it. You can do it. Awesome. Kevin, thank you so much for your insights. No problem at all. Best of luck with everything going on and your mission. I like it. Yeah, look, it's an unusual thing to be involved with a company that's got this young blood in it and is so hungry to move forward. That's something that's really good to see in the industry. Yeah, so that you look to be a part of that mission and make it happen. Yeah, that's right. Being part of that is really important for me. I'm sort of into my career now, but to get that one last shot to see if someone can get it going again and make it, it's important. Yeah, good on you. Love it. Okay, thanks, Ben. You're very, very welcome. Thank you, everybody. If you enjoyed content like this and find it insightful, make sure you follow in here to see plenty more of it. Outside of that, we'll see you very soon. Bye for now. Thank you for listening to another episode of the Ben Taylor podcast, the home of marine industry insights. We'll see you again very soon. Bye for now.