(Bloomberg) -- Sales in Britain's leisure boat industry have risen to the highest level since the financial crisis, and a Brexit-weakened pound is boosting exports.
U.K. makers of yachts and pleasure-boating equipment recorded a 1.6 percent increase in revenue to 3 billion pounds ($3.7 billion) in the year ending April 2016, the highest since 2009, according to industry body British Marine.
Phil Popham
Business confidence has been “particularly buoyant” since the June vote to leave the European Union, driven by Britain's 605 million-pound superyacht industry, the group said in a report. Like many exporters of premium goods, luxury boat manufacturers have gotten a boost from the fall in the pound.
“There are more and more people who can afford superyachts,” said Phil Popham, chief executive officer of U.K.-based Sunseeker International Ltd., in an interview with Bloomberg Television on Monday. “We did get some benefit from the devaluation of the pound short-term -- there's no doubt we transacted some business early after the referendum.”
Sunseeker sold 41 percent more boats in 2016 than a year earlier. The company, which exports 98 percent of sales, said strong growth prompted its plans for four new models in 2017, following five introductions last year.
The benefits of the pound's plunge have eased since the vote, Popham said. The currency's 12 percent fall against the euro has raised the cost of supplies from abroad, though there was still a net benefit from the fall, British Marine said.
Selling a boat requires heavy investment in research and development as well as long-term courting of buyers, which could be jeopardized if Britain severs ties with the EU single market, Popham said.
“Brexit's going to be difficult,” he said. “It's going to be complicated. We've been pushing and urging government to actually have a timetable to make sure that the important thing is that confidence is retained.”
To contact the reporter on this story: John Ainger in London at jainger@bloomberg.net. To contact the editors responsible for this story: Eddie Buckle at ebuckle@bloomberg.net, Eric Pfanner at epfanner1@bloomberg.net, Paul Jarvis
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