Why Poland’s Yacht Builders Are Among World Leaders
Why Poland’s Yacht Builders Are Among World Leaders

Summary/Abstract: Objective: The aim of this paper is to demonstrate how a high-skilled competitively-priced Polish labour force, thriving amid manufacturing policies which are far from a coalition of coincidences, has created a specialist yacht-building sector – and a superyacht one with exceptional potential. Research Design & Methods: After the superyacht sector is defined and described, this theoretical and empirical study sets out to apply basic correlation and regression in order to isolate demand and production factors most likely to explain and ensure continued success. Limited data and previous research produces a clear result nonetheless. Compared with boatyards in nascent or mature boatbuilding nations, manufacturing nations with a strong labour market – a highly-skilled, cost-competitive workforce – are delivering persistent prosperity with promise of further growth. This, for the first time, weighs the comparative importance of supply-side factors driving production, as well as it points to the way for further work to understand its success. Findings: A positive relationship between overall global fleet size and the numbers of millionaires in producer countries is confirmed by correlation and regression analyses, which proves three hypotheses. First, the dominant influence of competitive labour resources; second, the much lesser role of tax policy among other factors, such as industry path dependency and education levels, which are also key economic drivers of growth. The third, subsidiary hypothesis also holds: that a sector with special advantages – in this case luxury products in a resilient marketplace – can to some extent avoid the disadvantages of an economy’s small size while outperforming other manufacturing segments. The findings confirm that the global superyacht market presents significant opportunities for expansion and enterprise for producers such as Poland. Implications/Recommendations: The EU recognises the importance of marine industries to trade and enterprise. However, to take advantage of assured superyacht market growth, policymakers need to continue to nurture a skilled labour pool with funding and training support. They could also cut corporation tax to specifically support boatbuilders, perhaps introducing a lower tier for innovating and expanding industries under Industrial Revolution 0.4 strategies. Contribution/Value Added: The values of this article include the following: an in-depth examination of a specific sector with appeal to work and wealth creators worldwide; identifying a special labour market premium in Poland as well as low-cost producer nations and unrecognised upside opportunities for all market participants.

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