Founding In 1973 Richard Matthews founded Oyster Marine and commissioned the 32 ft prototype three quarter tonner sailing yacht
UFO II, designed by British Naval Architects and built by Norfolk based boatbuilder, Landamores.
UFO won the
Royal Yacht Squadron's de Maas Cup at Cowes in 1974. The design was developed into the
UFO 34, and this became the first yacht to be produced by Oyster Marine. the first yacht produced by Oyster Marine
Design In 1978 Oyster Marine introduced a 46 ft cruising ketch designed by Holman & Pye, pioneering the Deck Saloon feature that has since become the company's trademark. Oyster continued to increase the size of its vessels, launching a 53 ft design by Rob Humphreys in 1997 followed by a 62 ft Humphreys' design in 2002. Today, Oyster Yachts builds sailboats ranging from 56 ft to 125 ft, all designed by Rob Humphreys and the Oyster Design Team.
British Manufacture Even during the company’s beginnings, when a lot of its boat building was subcontracted out, production was always awarded to other British yards. The most notable of these were Landamores in Hoveton (Wroxham) who were responsible for the majority of Oysters produced. Only a couple of models in the company’s history have ever been built outside the UK. These are the Oyster 49, Oyster 54 and LD43 parts of the production run was produced in
New Zealand by McDell Marine and the 100 ft and 125 ft yachts designed by Ed Dubois built at RMK Marine in
Turkey. Oyster have moved from being a marketing company which it was for the majority of its history, to taking assembly in-house in 2000s and in 2019 it took the final step in this process taking hull moulding in-house in a partnership with Lloyds Register.
Ownership, Administration and Acquisition In 2008 the company was sold to private equity house Balmoral Capital in 2008 for around £70m who then sold it in 2012 to Dutch private equity firm HTP Investments BV for around £15m. On 5 February 2018, Oyster Marine, the boat-building arm of the Oyster group (which also includes Oyster Brokerage and Oyster Charter) went into administration. In July 2015, there was a failure of the internal hull structure of an Oyster 825 "Polina Star III". An investigation found the manufacturing process of the inner structure of the Oyster 825 led to the vessel sinking. Following the successful launch of several new models the company closed at the end of 2017 due to cash flow issues. The then owner, Dutch Private Equity owner H.T.P. Investments BV withdrew their support, leaving the directors with no alternative but to appoint Administrators. KPMG was appointed as administrator to Oyster Marine Holdings (the holding company for Oyster Yachts) on 7 February 2018. Hadida began re-employing many previous employees of Oyster Yachts. == Reinvestment and Growth ==