KAOHSIUNG, Taiwan: Asia is vying for a bigger share of the multibillion-dollar luxury-boat market.
Led by Taiwan and increasingly China, Asia has narrowed the gap with the West in recent years, though it still lags Europe in the race for a market where yachts can sell for tens of millions of dollars.
Asian yacht-builders offer prices that average about a third less in Taiwan and up to half as much in China compared with boats built in the West. But low prices sometimes come with lower quality, especially from China, and less individuality, according to industry analysts.
"Taiwan is already a good market with experience with building yachts and China could be the future one," said Francesco Frediani, vice president for sales at Riva Yacht, an Italian company whose customers include Nicholas Cage and Sophia Loren.
"They are growing their expertise at the moment. But in terms of handling boat-related problems, Europe still owns the expertise."
Taiwan and China are the two current leaders in Asia, with about 100 orders on the books this year, three-quarters of those for Taiwan, for yachts longer than 24 meters, or 80 feet according to an industry tracker, ShowBoats International. The figure was up sharply from 2005, when the two countries had about 60 orders combined.
While growing, those numbers still trail well behind those of Italy, the world's leader, with more than 400 orders this year, and the United States, with more than 100.
"Taiwan's boats sell good - people like them," said Andy Ye of Floating Life, a Switzerland-based boat manager of super-yachts that recently opened a Shanghai office.
"But in terms of innovation, the Italians or the Dutch or the French have more innovative designs. They set the trends; Taiwan follows."
The gritty workshops where Asia makes its super-yachts contrast sharply with the glitzy finished products.
A hangar-size building hums as sweat-soaked laborers work inside the steel shells of four 27-meter yachts being built by Jade Yachts in the southern Taiwan port city of Kaohsiung, where the Taiwanese luxury-boat industry is based.
These hulls, filled with sawdust, will eventually end up as multilevel yachts with rooms for 12 to 14 guests and features like glass elevators, Jacuzzis and entertainment centers with elaborate audio and video systems.
Jade began its large-yacht business in 2005 by re-outfitting a 210-foot research vessel into a luxury craft for the fashion company LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton.
Luke Huang, special assistant to the company's president, said the 27-meter yachts under construction each carried a list price of €8 million, or $12.6 million, though he added that the LVMH refitting was much more expensive. "These are very expensive toys," Huang said.
Jade's high-end customers come from such countries as Russia, Malta and Spain. "The buyers are all very rich," Huang said.
Such wealth helps to shield the industry from the kinds of economic downturns now plaguing the United States and spreading to other parts of the world, said Jack Chen, chairman of the Taiwan Yacht Industry Association.
"These are people with lots of money, even when the global economy isn't so good," he said. Growing geographic diversity among buyers, Chen added, is also helping to shield the sector.
Within Asia, Taiwan has a 30-year jump on China. Opinions differ on why Taiwan first emerged as a yacht-building location as early as the 1960s, while the rest of Asia apart from China has remained a relative backwater.
But most agree low costs and the abundance of U.S. troops, including many sailors, stationed on the island during the height of tensions between Taiwan and China in the 1950s through to the 1970s was a factor as some of these sailors worked with locals to build boats in their spare time.
"It's a lot less than it'd cost in the U.S.," said David Povich, an American lawyer, on a recent trip to inspect a boat he was having built by Tayana Yachts, also in Kaohsiung.
China has emerged more recently as Taiwan yacht builders moved to the mainland in search of lower costs.
Just as Asia is new to yacht building, the growing numbers of rich Asians are also relative newcomers to yacht owning, despite the region's reputation for showy displays of wealth.
According to ShowBoats International, 4 percent of people ordering yachts of at least 24 meters were in Asia in 2008, while nearly half were in Europe and a quarter were in North America.
Within Asia itself, many buyers come from places with large Western influences.
"There are some Asian buyers, mostly in Hong Kong and Singapore," said Ye, of Floating Life.
"In China the yacht market is just starting out. But Chinese people have lots of money and luxury product consuming is on the rise, and so is yacht buying."
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