Just one month after Bavaria Yachtbau filed for voluntary administration in a German court, the country’s largest serial boatyard today reported that production is running smoothly at its main plant in Giebelstadt and that boat deliveries have resumed.

“More than 30 yachts have left the yard in the past two weeks and have been handed over to customers,” says the company in a press release. “All 600 employees are on duty.”

With this the shipyard is setting an important signal of confidence to the dealerships and customers who have ordered a boat and are awaiting delivery.

Regarding the commonly feared withdrawal of suppliers, external press agency Schellenberg & Kirchberg PR has given a ‘thumbs-up’, at least for the three-month interim phase. “Agreements were set with all major suppliers on further deliveries with short payment terms.”

The next step now is to find a new investor for the company, which was sold by the founders in 2007 to a group of investors for an estimated €1.2bn shortly before the start of the economic crisis. According to press spokesman Cord Schellenberg, the objective for Bavaria Yachtbau is to be able to present an investor in July 2018.

“We are continuing the operations and want to enter the coming order season with a new investor,” explains Tobias Brinkmann, a Hamburg-based restructuring expert who was recently appointed to the management of Bavaria Yachtbau GmbH. “We have already received initial expressions of interest and are actively addressing potential investors.”

Consultancy firm One Square Advisors has been tasked with finding an investor.

Asked today what it needs to attract new orders, Brinkmann said: “We want to hand over to the new investor a shipyard that is in operation and that also has a certain order book.”

Speaking to Germany’s floatmagazin.de, he added: “We want to allocate production slots to these boats so that we can schedule them for production in the new fiscal year, which starts at the beginning of August. It is then of course up to the buyer of the shipyard to activate and accept these orders.”

A precondition for this is the support of the suppliers. “We have all major suppliers on board. This is a success because there are certain suppliers that cannot be replaced so easily. That was the most important thing to continue production. We don’t have a supplier to block us,” Brinkmann explains.

Potential investors for Bavaria Yachtbau come from a range of backgrounds. “As always, there are strategic investors, also from the industry, as well as financial investors and entrepreneurial persons and families,” Brinkmann adds. “We will accept those who have a serious and substantial interest.”