A Quiet Revolution at a Storied British Yacht Builder

Antony Sheriff came to Princess yachts three years ago, not long after leaving McLaren Automotive. He expected to bring lessons learned from making supercars to yacht manufacturing, a hidebound business famous for losing money the old-fashioned way—hand over first when times got tough.

With no experience in boatbuilding, executive chairman Sheriff suspected many of the car industry’s cost-cutting strategies developed over the past two decades would transfer neatly. But he soon found how little the application of time-honored money savers, like outsourcing and cutting jobs, transferred to hand building yachts and superyachts of up to 40 meters in Plymouth, on England’s south coast.