A well-damped covid effect in 2020 for Fountaine-Pajot
Although it concedes a 15% drop in financial results over the 2020 financial year due to the closure of the factory during the containment, the Fountaine-Pajot Group, owner of the eponymous catamaran brand and the Dufour sailing yachts, believes it has resisted well to the effects of the economic crisis linked to the Covid-19. "All the brands made a positive net result. Investments continued. We were able to continue to deliver the boats on time. We had to reinvent the means of showing and selling the boats. We saw the arrival of new boaters, particularly at Dufour. We weren't very comfortable with the future a year ago (Editor's note: in February 2020). We are now. More and more customers want to sail. There have been a lot of orders since May 2020," rejoices Romain Motteau, Deputy Managing Director of the Fountaine-Pajot Group.
33 Meuros for boats and means of production
While the last Sail & Power strategic plan was completed in 2020, Fountaine-Pajot has revealed the broad outlines of its new four-year project, named Odyssea 2024. 3 main lines are announced by the management:
- Social: the success of the collective, the recruitment and training of new employees and the improvement of working conditions
- The environment: ever more virtuous and innovative production processes and the development of more environmentally friendly boats
- Economic performance to increase the capacity to invest and redistribute results among teams.
With rapid growth over the period 2016-2020, the company has faced a change of scale, from 350 to 1300 employees, from 2 to 5 sites, from 150 to 650 boats per year. It must therefore adapt in its social and industrial management as evidenced by the new objectives. 13 new models are announced within 4 years.
"We have already carried out work in the factory and developed the supply chain at Dufour. We are on the way to delivering what we promised two years ago," explains Romain Motteau. For its new Dufour 61, the sailing yacht brand from La Rochelle has organised an independent yard within the site, capable of building 5 to 10 monohulls per year depending on the market.
A role as an environmental platform for yachting
Environmental issues are at the heart of the group's communication. "Fountaine-Pajot wants to become the leader in sustainable development in our industry. To achieve this, we want to become an innovation platform bringing together an ecosystem of independent solutions and companies to build a common vision. We believe that in 2030, we will be able to produce boats with no carbon impact by using the SBT protocol (NDLR :Science Based Targets, a method of measuring the carbon budget) and offsetting," says Romain Motteau.
To achieve this, the company intends to focus in particular on hydrogen solutions in its motoryacht range, solar recharging solutions or new materials, recycled or biocomposite. The integration of 2000W of solar panels on the latest 51-foot catamaran is a first step in this approach. Whilst additional dishwashers and refrigerators remain the options put forward, one may nevertheless wonder whether the objectives of neutrality at 10 years are really achievable without more sobriety and without having too much recourse to compensation mechanisms.
