Taiwan & China – The Latest Boat Building Hub

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China and India have always been known to be at par with each other in almost every case other than Boat Building. This time around the competition is between China & Taiwan.

Taiwan and china are the news boat building hubs which according to this article are even competing with the likes of Europe and America.



Pricing and labor costs are certainly one of the key factors which are responsible for competing with other international markets. And why not when you can get the same size of yacht for 1/3 rd the price.

What about quality?


China has always been considered as a low cost but unreliable & substandard with poor quality and finishing. Although now there seems to be some shift in the mind set about the yachts coming out of china in terms of quality but they still don’t seem to be in par with European standards.

Taiwan on the other hand has been involved in boat building since the 60’ and 70’ and has a better reputation than china in terms of quality for the boats they manufacturer.


This year there have been around 100 orders places between Taiwan and china for boats above 80 feet. The bigger buyers for these Asian boats seem to be Europeans and Americans with Asians also having a good share of the pie due to increase in economies, individual wealth and spending power.



Italian yacht companies on the other hand have an estimated order for 400 boats this year. Although china and Taiwan seem to be pretty far in terms of the number of orders this year as compared to Italy, there come pretty close to the America which also has an order this year of just above 100 boats.

"Taiwan is already a good market with experience with building yachts and China could be the future one," said Francesco Frediani, vice president of sales at Italian luxury yacht maker Riva Yacht.

Innovation and individuality also seem to be the biggest drawbacks in terms of boat manufacture from Taiwan and China.

"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.



During the 1970s, when it first started to produce relatively large numbers of pleasure craft, Taiwan was mostly turning out boats in the 9m-15m (30ft-50ft) sector.

Even as we talk about china overtaking Taiwan, one should be aware that these days, as much as 90 per cent of the boat building investment and activity in China has Taiwanese connections of some kind.
Many Taiwanese boatbuilding operations are involved either directly or behind the scenes with fledgling Chinese boat builders.

Here is the link of some of the yacht manufacturers in China & Taiwan. Click Here

Click here to know more about Taiwan

Will the market in the long run be captured by china in the long run? Will Italian yachts loose their charm? Will companies and brands open manufacturing units in such Asian markets to lower costs and compete locally? We would like to hear your thoughts on this subject, do send us your suggestions by commenting on the post.