Making a genoa for the world’s biggest sailing sloop will be a breeze for Doyle Sails in its new 6500 sq m state of-the-art Rosebank premises.
One of the world’s biggest sail makers, Doyle Sails is moving over the holidays into a PFI-owned building on Rosebank Road to bring the three divisions of its business under one roof.
Previously operating from three plants of between 800 sq m and 1200 sq m each at Westhaven, Mt Wellington and Penrose, Doyle Sails managing director Chris McMaster was in his car from four to six hours each day travelling between each property.
“It had become particularly difficult to manage the business in three different locations and winning the contract to build the sails for the next and biggest sloop from Dubois Naval Architects gave us the push to find bigger premises. Our existing plants were not physically big enough to make the sloop’s sails.
“Sail making is a high technology business that is always evolving and it was becoming hard to grow the business while the company is divided over three sites. “Moving to one building means we can identify and fix problems faster.”
McMaster worked with Colliers International industrial broker Mike Fraser to find a building big enough for Doyle Sails existing business and give the company room for future expansion.
“Initially Doyle Sails wanted to buy a building and confined its search to Mr Wellington, Penrose, Onehunga and the fringes of East Tamaki,” says Fraser. “The Southern Motorway became a fly in the ointment because 80 per cent of the company’s main work is at Westhaven.”
During the premises search it became evident, says Fraser that buying a building during economic turmoil wasn’t the best decision for Doyle Sails.
“Renting and moving to the west side of the city, about 15 minutes from the CBD, was by far the best option. Taking PFI’s building on a long term lease has allowed the company to put more money into the business and set up a world class facility.”
Doyle Sails is spending $2 million on a specialised fitout and McMaster says there will be few sail making lofts of this quality in the world. “The timing has been perfect. There is a shortage of building work and we managed to employ good contractors to give us a high quality fitout in a quick turnaround.
He says the company will gain efficiencies of about 15 per cent from its manufacturing process being under one roof. “Making sails is a room intensive job. Several of our contracts coming up have sails that are more than 74 metres long and by having the room to lay them out we can have 10 people working on one sail at a time instead of two when we had to lay them out in sections in our smaller plants.”
The new building will improve working conditions for staff. “We have three teams of 10 to 18 people at each of our sites and many of them don’t know each other. In the current market we have to be able to react quickly, so we need to build a tight team who enjoy coming to work in a nice environment.”
McMaster has been in the sail making industry for 27 years and owns Doyle Sails with internationally renowned grand prix yacht racer Richard Bouzaid, who is one of the world’s top sail designers.
The company sprang out of smaller yacht businesses set up separately by McMaster’s and Bouzaid’s grandfathers at the bottom of Albert Street – the wharves and sailing ships hub at the time. Richard’s father Chris built New Zealand’s yachting reputation when he won the One Ton Cup in the 1960s.
In 1996 McMaster and Bouzaid merged their businesses and took on the US international Doyle franchise. “We identified the super yacht market early on, positioned ourselves in that sector and it has grown our business,” says McMaster.
Doyle Sails New Zealand built the sails on Mirabella V, currently the world’s biggest sloop, built in England for a US owner and costing more than $50 million.
Besides its international work, McMaster says the company still has a healthy local focus and half of its business is making sails for kids’ yachts through to half the cruising boats on the Hauraki Gulf.
Success came quickly for Doyle Sails New Zealand. Turnover has doubled in the past four years and the company’s light weight Stratis sail fabric, researched, developed and manufactured in New Zealand, is regarded at the best in the world.
The company is at the centre of the Doyle group. All research and development for the group is done in New Zealand and sails are manufactured for other Doyle lofts. There are 56 individual Doyle factories around the world and the company is particularly strong in North America, Italy, France and Germany. The New Zealand operation makes the specialist sails for many of these lofts.
“We make our product from start to finish.” The company can come up with a concept, order the raw materials, make a sail and be testing it on the water within two to three weeks. As a result, it does a lot of work with local super yacht builders Alloy Yachts, Yachting Development and Fitzroy Yachts in New Plymouth.
“If we were not moving to Rosebank, we would be going backwards,” says McMaster. “This move will give us more design innovation because research and design can work right alongside the other divisions; we can lay out a complete sail on the new floor, something we have not been able to do; and we will be able to make changes and innovations immediately.”
Sails on super yachts make up five to ten percent of a boat’s value and they have a relatively short life. McMaster says they need to be replaced every three to five years. “It’s a big part of our business.”
He says there now more performance owned big boats than just cruisers and the company is alongside many of the owners, who sail their yachts hard. “The lighter sails we specialise in increase performance and knowledgeable yacht owners can feel the difference.”
Doyle Sails has a team of sales people who follow the super yachts around the world, getting on board the yachts and talking continually to the owners and captains. “We are in the US five times a year and Europe three to four times a year looking after clients, attending the big boat shows and sailing on yachts to assess their sails,” says McMaster. “This has been an extremely successful side of our business and the owners and captains appreciate the customer service.”
The falling New Zealand dollar has helped Doyle Sails enormously in the past few months and means it can move the manufacture of some of its smaller gear, such as sail bags, back to this country from Asia. “We have always been conscious of keeping a manufacturing facility in New Zealand so we could move these items back when the economy changed.”
The company has work booked up until the end of next year but McMaster says it could be tight in 2010. “As an innovator we will ride the storm through.”
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