Key superyacht figures join forces to promote sustainability

With sustainability rising on many agendas, key superyacht industry actors have joined forces to promote innovative technologies and conservation techniques in building, repairing, maintaining and refitting yachts.

The role of the Water Revolution Foundation, created in the margins of the 2018 METSTRADE Show in Amsterdam, “is to facilitate sustainability in the yacht sector,” Robert van Tol, the group’s secretary general, told IBI. “To point the industry to sustainable products and technologies. To tell them where they can be obtained.”

People behind the foundation include Feadship CEO Henk de Vries III, Vienna Eleuteri of the Eulabor Institute research institute for sustainability, yacht designer Philippe Briand and Superyacht Group chairman Martin Redmayne.

The for-and-by-the-industry platform is extending an industry-wide appeal to get involved. “It will be a facilitator of sustainability by sharing information and best practices,” says Van Tol, adding that measuring ecological impacts “will lead to more conscious choices of materials and consideration of new technology.”

The foundation’s primary goal is to nudge the industry to jointly neutralise “our ecological footprint, optimising the use of resources and taking responsibility to look after the world’s precious oceans. Each new delivery has the potential to surpass the state-of-the-art of the previous delivery.”

But sustainability is not just for new builds, says Tol. “It also applies to refits.”