Transparency is my middle name. The winner. It's my middle name. Everybody who knows me... What's your full name again? Marcel Transparency. Barzon Morel. Right, there we go. This is the Ben Taylor Podcast, the home of the Rean Industry Insights. Enjoy. Hi, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Ben Taylor Podcast. This particular series is all about profiling the Australian yachting industry and some of the organizations that are based down here. I'm here with Marcel today. Nice to see you, Marcel. Likewise, likewise. So give us a little context. What do you do? Who are you? What's your thing? Yeah, sure. Well, I started life as a shipwright. So I was very much hands-on. I remember meeting one of my first people that I worked under was... I remember seeing him as... I'm thinking he was about 65 as a shipwright. He was incredibly weather-beaten. And I thought at the age of 17, I don't want to look like him when I get to 60. So that later on, I became a... I'm now a maritime lawyer. Right, okay. Yeah. So with what I do, what we do is we formed a company and incorporated in Hong Kong, a management company. And that management company employs me doing legal services in essence all over the world. And we also do and have an advocacy management service which we provide as well, which employs in terms of super yachts, all sorts of people that are required. And we work in closely with the owners of the boats when they're getting built, this sort of thing. Yeah. And this is particularly interesting because you're an Australian. Yeah. That's set up in Hong Kong to do more business with Asia. More business with Asia. It's like, I suppose this thing is about coming to them. Right. It was said to me in a meeting with a prominent Asian builder when I met him in Sydney two years ago, and we were talking. It had been the first time I'd obviously met him. And he said, he asked me where my company was. And I said, it's in Hong Kong. And he said, looked at me and he said, we can now do business. Wow. So that for me... It makes that much difference. Yeah, it made that much sense. It's huge. Yeah. So when I go in, I go into Hong Kong yearly. And from there, I always have plans to go into China and visit different companies and things like that. Yeah. And that's really, really well received. Like it's difficult to expect them to do business with organizations that are based so far away, like Australia. Like Australia. Exactly. And it's almost like a... Oh, how would you say it? It fits in with the concept of, I suppose in some respects, reciprocity where, you know, you give something and I give something. And it's about being sane to come. Yeah, it takes up for that bit of engagement and commitment. And I also think like it's not such a direct message, but it's also an understanding of their culture and your investment in the region. You're going to be around for a while. Yeah. It's not just kind of a bit of a cowboy move of you turned up, you want to do loads of business there. And then you're going to be based abroad and they're not going to really have that close relationship with you. It's going to make a difference in the service you provide. Yeah. I mean, my practice as a practice is 18 years old, but I've been sailing since I was five. So that means 55, 57. So now I'm giving my age away. So, you know, I've been involved in the industry, really, if I think about it for 57 years. Yeah. And then as a shipwright, I was in the industry working for 30 years. And then with my practice, with what I do now, it's now 18 years old. So, you know, and there's not too many people who are in the industry who don't know me or know of me, you know. Yeah. I think one of the... I was published in quite a few different magazines over the years. And one of the fairly prominent one that I published in, will still do publishing. And that has international, you know, research for the internet, you know, you can download it anywhere. Yeah. And it's funny, people come up to me and I go, I think I've met you somewhere. And I go, well, do you read this magazine? And they say, yeah, we do. And I said, well, I'm the guy who wrote it. Oh, yeah. Got the really bad picture in the back of that magazine. Was it from a long time ago as well? It is. And it's, you know, that's one behind the desk with the glasses popped down. That's, oh, it's so bad. Yeah. You know, but they go, yeah, okay, that daggy photo. Yeah. Yeah. And so give us an example. What's a typical problem that you're solving at the minute that perhaps hasn't always traditionally been there, something fresh, something new, something that's kind of we can all learn from? We do a lot of, one aspect of what we do is we do a lot of helping Australia, for instance, Australian buyers buying overseas. Okay. And so what typically will happen, you might have a broker in the Camargue. You might have, the boat might be in this actually situation at the moment. The boat's situated in curfew. You've got the owner living in America. And we've got a broker here in Australia who is also working with it. And we've got an Italian lawyer who is involved. And then there's ourselves. So we have this multifaceted situation happening with all different parties. And then our job is to, in this particular case, the client wants to shift the boat out of the Malta flagging and move it to AMSA flagging. Okay. So because we're based here in Australia, we're assisting the client with that AMSA side and getting and providing that conduit through to AMSA. And so what are the complications that occur when you're doing that? Like, what is that process? Not necessarily in this particular circumstance, but generally. And it is general because it's generally speaking dealing government agencies. Everybody thinks it appears straightforward, but it's never straightforward. And it's always different. Yeah. And there's a lot of assumptions which are made in that process. And the assumptions are often... Well, they're assumptions. So they can overlook the details that are actually quite important. It's sort of connected to the flagging. One of the assumptions is, okay, how do we get away from playing customs duty and taxes, bringing a boat into Australia? I mean, that's a big one. Yeah. And that's not necessarily connected. That's not necessarily this case because obviously my clients, it's going to be a commercial vessel, bring the vessel into Australia. He's going to be taking advantage of all of the tax laws and all the rest of it in order to be able to... And we've got a rule called the bounty rule here in Australia. So he's going to be taking advantage of all of these types of things, which we'll be able to help him with to make those... That bring that vessel in. Now, he's not aware of the bounty rule. A lot of people aren't aware of that. And that's a way of basically, if you've got a vessel, which is a very big volume vessel, then under this bounty rule, it allows you to actually bring that vessel in and not pay customs duty. Right. So these are the kind of situations where if you don't have these types of services, you wouldn't be able to play it right. And ultimately might not actually be able to achieve what you want to do with your vessel in certain regions of the world. So this is kind of like a regional, very detailed level of understanding to help clients through that smoothly, efficiently, and ultimately get to be able to use and operate the boats as they want. And especially with the commercial vessels, understanding those rules means that you can... You get a good accountant on board, and means that you can actually start to set yourself up in a smart way as far as what are those customs duties and taxes and things that you have to pay or not pay. I mean, the other side of that coin is a lot of... For instance, we just talked about Australians. And a lot of Australians think that if you flag the vessel in another country, that when you bring your vessel into Australia, that you... I think they're arriving now. That helicopter comes and goes every about 10, 12 minutes. One just went, just as we started. I'll wait until he... It's a little aggressive on the sound. It should come through quite nice now. Oh, okay. Voices, yeah. One of the misunderstandings is if you're flagged in another country that you don't have to pay duty or GST when you come into the country. Right, but the case is if you're operating in this geography, then you're under the rules of this geography. Is that right? If you're an Australian citizen, domicile here in Australia, or even Australian citizen, you're bringing your boat into Australia, you don't get the benefit of temporary import or any of those sorts of things. Okay. There's different exclusions and things like that, but generally speaking, if you're an individual bringing your boat in, you pay tax the same as everybody else on your boat, the GST and things like, the duty as well. That's a really common one for us. It's a mistake which is often found, we find, with brokers. The majority of brokers in Australia are fantastic, but there's a few young players out there who, they get a sale, they're too gung-ho, they forget about the really detailed stuff to tell their client. Client thinks that they've got this great buy, they're buying overseas, of course we're buying overseas and we're going to flag in another country, so we're going to avoid taxes and GST. The broker's generally fairly silent on those, and they get a rude shock down the track. We try to educate the industry in general and, more importantly, our clients. Fairly recently, there was this charter reform in the Australia region so that people could charter and follow a framework more easily. What impact has that had? What's that creating for the Australian yachting industry? That's allowing people with vessels coming from other countries being able to charter in Australian waters. That's had a massive flow-on effect. There's an argument that some of the boats will say, well, why are we allowing, that's taking away from the local people. The reality of it is that the market's big enough to be able to support these other boats because the Australian market only goes so far. Bringing those boats from other seas might be bigger boats or whatever, it's different. The overall effect is that the government wins because the taxes are paid, but not only that, they'll stifle that and then they'll get a refit. The industry, it starts to flow through. There's a local economy like that. I always jump to the number of jobs in a shipyard is enormous. It's not uncommon for them to employ a couple of hundred people. That's a small one. Down the road here, there's thousands of people involved. They're running livelihoods for their whole life. Yeah. Through these refits, through this work. What they're doing down here is amazing. It's incredible. The Gold Coast is really seeing that as a real, they're looking at the future. Even though they're trying to be future-proofed, it's almost like, well, yeah, that's actually going to bring us up to where we are now. And maybe add some. But the reality of it is that if you look at the, and I know things have slowed a bit, but if you, the general overall trend of the number of these vessels that are in the world will only just pick up again and go. Yes, that's correct. And it's a bit like, in some respects, we're at the same position as what the Met is, where there's so many boats. There's not enough marinas. There's a lot of boats in the Met which never go to a marina. They're just constantly floating around. From what I've heard from being here, it's essentially an infrastructure problem. Like that's the limiting factor right now. And that's what we've got here. It's not demand. People want to be here. Yeah, yeah. And we've got an infrastructure problem here. You know, I mean, look, we've got to do something, but it's- You've got to build. You've got to build. That's what you're going to do, yeah. You've got to build. All of this stuff takes time. Yeah, yeah. And it's funny, like, I'm here to basically profile the yachting industry, in Australia, ready for things like the 2032 Brisbane Olympics. Yeah. And you think, right, okay, what an opportunity there for yachting. Yeah. There's a river that flows straight through Brisbane, the Brisbane River. Yeah. And there's potential for yachts to be there. Yeah. So where are they going to moor? Where are they going to spend? Are they going to cruise around the South Pacific Islands first? Are they going to go into Sydney and Gold Coast and all the rest of it? And is this region going to be prepared for it? Are they going to capitalize on that opportunity? Are they going to be able to accommodate for that? And then what's going to be the effect after 2032? Are they still going to have boats in this region doing refits in 2034 and beyond? Or is it just going to kind of be a little peak that goes back to normal? Not sure. The way I look at it is it depends on how they manage it. Yeah. If I look at what they did in New Zealand, that has had a lasting effect. So the New Zealand government, many, I don't know, it was probably about 10 years ago, if I remember rightly. But it was back when they had the first America's Cup back then. It might have been a bit more than that. The New Zealand government invested, I think, it was something like $40 million. It was an insane amount of money back there into the industry. And the return they got was... A good one. Was a good one. A very good one, yeah. Exactly. It was like something like three times just in the immediate moment. Yeah. But that carried on. Like it left an enduring effect. It just created a whole culture there. Like from the skill set, the craftsmanship, all the kind of the support businesses out there. But then also like some of the sailors that are coming out of New Zealand are incredible. I know. And they, you know, they built, I think they were delivering at the peak, they were delivering about 300 shipwright apprentices per year out of their tapes to looking to the future and all that sort of stuff. I'm not sure how, where it sits at the moment in terms of that industry. It's like, it's a fickle industry to some degree. And, you know, it has its ups and downs like anything. But the bottom line is that there are still boats still going, you know, coming around the top of Australia and still going down to New Zealand for refits because they've got infrastructure. And we were all here in Australia, I think we've come a long way, but there's still a lot more to do. Putting more together in the South Island. Yeah. The other aspect of what I do is the build management side of things. Okay, go on. Yeah. Yeah. So this was, this came out of, I was approached by an Italian surveyor, a naval architect who I'd actually met up here at Sanctuary Cove. So it just shows you how these things sort of happen, you know. Basically, it was over a few drinks. We met, you know, a couple of months later, I get this phone call. Hey, Marcel, I've got this super yacht build. Do you want to come and be involved? Right. Yeah, let's try it. Let's get involved. Yeah, let's get involved. So what happened? So we got in, so it was, this was my first one and we got in there and we had a Turkish builder. And at that time, it was before the war in the Ukraine, we had a Russian purchaser. Okay. We had a broker here in Australia and it was the, I would say it, there was a lot of tension in the room, different nationalities, a lot of, you know, chest beating. Culture differences. Yeah, all these differences and things like that. And I found my job. It was interesting. People say, what is your job in that space? And I, you know, you've got to write down what your job is. And it's really hard to write it down because it could be anything. And I found myself in this position as sort of almost like being a peacekeeper. I was the person. Yeah, you're a mediator between everyone. I was a mediator. Understanding all the different parties and making sure everyone's all right. I was stopping for World War III. Yeah, over a boat build. Over a boat build, you know, and I mean, it really was like that. Yeah, it was that level of friction and tension. I think if they'd been in the room together, there would have been fisticuffs. So it was that bad. And my wife at the time, it was a Zoom call. My wife was sitting outside the camera at that time. And after it all finished, she got up and went, oh, my God, are these guys men? Wow, everyone got involved then. Yeah, or are they in the schoolyard, you know? So a lot of it, it's not always that bad. But a lot of it's about, you know, you've got the first thing you've got. And a person wants to build a boat and the owner. And it'll be a variation of a theme in terms of how much knowledge they've got. So some people have got no knowledge whatsoever. And they also have different levels of how much knowledge they want. I just some people go, I just want a boat. I just want to enjoy it. That's fine. Others will love learning about everything from the navigation systems on board, the technical capabilities and the process of the build. That's right. It's almost a hobby. True to not wanting any knowledge. Right, yeah. But there is a core aspect to everybody, regardless of whether you're buying a car or buying a boat or buying a product. There's an element of understanding the quality and what you're getting. Yeah, what are you actually buying? What are you actually buying? And what can be achievable? Right. And so you end up as a mediator between this buyer, the guys funding it all, the builders, the broker. Yeah. And all of the other service providers. So I've got this sort of picture. Which is going to be a lot of it. Yeah. So I've got a picture of the owner up there. 80 plus suppliers. Well, you've got the broker over here and you've got the builder over here. And I'm sort of sitting in the middle of it. And the owner's going through me. And it's sort of a multifaceted sort of movement of however he's talking with each other. And you've got all of it down this part, all of the suppliers. Which could be any number. There's a lot, yeah. And then some of them are in-house. Some of them are contractors, this type of thing. So it gets quite complicated. But sort of understanding how, like for instance, we're, I don't know, we're about two thirds or a third of the way through the build. And the client decided at some point in time that he wanted to have a spar on the boat. And the spar up fairly high up on one. I think it was up on the bridge deck. He wanted the spar. There's some area out the back there. So we looked at, so I started this discussion with the broker and with the builder about this. And they started putting some specs together to see what this would look like. And at the same time, the owner wanted the boat to be able to go certain, to have this ability to go certain distances. Right. So we now had a tension between loading up the boat with another, you know, you know, five ton of water sitting up there or whatever it was sitting up on top of this thing. And looking at the specs of that. Yeah. Classic disconnect between like technical specification of what's needed for the use case. Yeah. And yeah, but I want to pull on the top deck. Yeah. Like it's... So it became a, when they ran the numbers, they realized that they lost, a whole lot of things happened. Obviously the boat's going to sink down lower. They're going to lose distance in terms that they then needed more fuel. The whole design's changed. So I put fuel in and then they put more fuel in and it got even less. I can feel it already. Like you go to the boat where the scope creep has changed. We're doing a different thing now. Yeah, exactly. It's not how it is. That's right. Not how it started. What had to be explained and had been explained to the owner early in the piece is that, when the boat's designed, it's designed to a certain specification. And all of those things that flow off it. And then if you wanted, and you can't just go and change midstream, so to say, what's happening. So that was part of my job to try and get the owner to understand that. Have the owner understand that. I mean, whether I did a good job, I don't know. I mean, he came to, I stayed on the boat. I suppose I must've done a good job. And then, but then came other issues like he wasn't listening. We needed to get a bill captain to take over handover of the boat in Turkey. Right. And the boat should have stayed in Turkey for, you know, another couple of months to get to for a period to get that, you know, all of those things sorted out. But that didn't happen. My client was, even though I was saying these things, he wasn't listening. So we had the boat, we got the boat on a ship, came over here, dropped off at Newcastle. And there was, we then had to get in and do a whole lot of work to get, employ people, get everything organized for the boat, employ. I was employing captains. I was employing crew, the whole thing. So I found myself in that situation where I started off as, in essence, the lawyer. I found myself in this position of project management. And that's, that in essence was the starting of the idea. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry, I forgot where we started. And so that's how you got involved in the whole. In the whole thing. That's, that created that. That was the, that was the seed that spawned my Hong Kong business. Now growing into all this. Well, Marcel, thanks. Thanks for being so transparent. It's, it's, it's not as common as I would like it to be being this transparent about here's the reality. Here's what happens. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know why that is. I think that is the way it should be. I think transparency is the way forward. But thank you for coming on the podcast and approaching our way. That's true. Transparency is the, my middle name. The winner. Is my middle name. Everybody who knows me. What's your full name again? Marcel Transparency. Barzon Morel. Right. There we go. And if anybody's involved in this process, how can they get in touch with you? We have a website. We also, which is. And the company is. They can, they can Google just my name. Right kind of. But they can also Google Barzon Morel solicitors. Or they can go on and Google for VML maritime or international maritime. Okay. So those ones, but thank you. Yeah. Thank you very much. Lovely. Thank you. Everybody, if you find content like this insightful, make sure you're following here to see plenty more of it. All being well. We'll see you again 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.