Sunmarine Yachting Club in Ukraine

Yacht-club which will provide following services: 1-5 days yacht charter, training, storing, repairing and maintenance.

Sunmarine LLC is Sevastopol based logistic and cargo transportation company, considering an opportunity to develop new business project in yachting services segment in Crimea. The company has broad experience in operating of different kinds of ships, including transport forwarding services, customs clearance, freight vessels, ships and cargo survey.

The company management has found increasing demand in yachting services in Crimea and intends to become a leading specialist company operating in this segment during the next 3-5 years with a strong brand, based on quality and affordable services. The company will provide following services: 1-5 days yacht charter, training, storing, repairing and maintenance.

The target audience is Crimean local residents and tourists from CIS countries as well as other foreign tourists. Special interest is foreign tourists from cruise liners that regularly come to Sevastopol and Yalta all round the year. They usually rent yachts for 1-2 days to travel along South Crimean Coast and have licenses to drive yachts.

Now the yachting service market in Crimea is in the stage of formation. Crimean coast is a huge resort and recreation area with a soft Mediterranean climate and scenic views. Its bays and coves are among the most suitable for marinas in the World. There are 2.5 mln permanent resi-dents in Crimea and more than 6 mln tourists come to resort annually. Over the past 10 years there was growing interest to yachting from Ukrainian and Russian tourists in Crimea.

The majority wealthy Ukrainians bought their own yachts. The idea of Sunmarine is to develop yachting services afforda-ble for any tourist that will diversify their activities on the sea. On manage-ment’s opinion, it can be possible to place 10 - 15 small class yachts in every major resort in the Crimean coast.

The most important criteria for tourists are easy man-agement, fast development of basic skills, simple paperwork, and safety op-eration. According to these criteria “MakGregor 26” yacht was selected.

Interested investors can receive more information if they contact us on Merar. Investment project description is available for download.

The key success factors for this project are following:
- Full year demand for yachting services in Crimea because of soft Mediterranean climate.
- Owners’ experience in yachting, shipbuilding and their knowledge of the market
- Easy to hire knowledgeable and experienced staff in Sevastopol
- Preference to easy manageable yachts - for this purpose “MakGregor 26” yacht was selected
- Poor competition in the region

To build the strong brand the project need advertising campaign and active promotion. The strategy also includes additional services that will help company to increase demand and develop yachting culture among Crimean tourists as well as bring additional profit. These services are following:
- Training people of all ages in yachting school;
- Building marinas in major resorts with repair, maintenance and storage facilities for low season;
- Providing transportation, forwarding and customs clearance services for those who want to buy yachts.

Selling Sunmarine’s yachts to the new owners will create an opportunity to attract additional capital to the company and make such owners new yacht-club members with a possibility to lease out their yachts to Sunmarine and make a profit.

The payback period of the project is 3 years.

Sunmarine plans to start from 10 yachts and then increase the number up to 100 yachts. Yacht clubs will be located in the main Crimean resorts such as Great Yalta, Sevastopol, Feodosia and Eupatoria. To start the business company need US $ 800 000, including US $ 400 000 to buy 10 fully equipped yachts and US $ 400 000 for working capital needs. The company is seeking investor to finance 75% of the project costs and pro-poses the share in the business or yacht ownership. In case of debt capital yachts can serve as the collateral. Investor professional knowledge in purchasing and operating small vessels is preferred.