While several major British motor yacht builders are struggling, changing owners and cutting staff, Setag Yachts, set up by former Princess Yachts people, is building a business on the boats those yards launched ten or twenty years ago. The Plymouth company now takes on 30 to 35 brokerage boats a year, mostly motor yachts from 35 feet to 40 metres, and rebuilds them to the standard of a new boat, Marine Industry News reported on 23 September. Chris Gates, managing director of Princess Yachts until 2019, founded it in 2021. Last year it opened a second base, in Denia, Spain.
What does Setag do to a used boat?
Setag works only on boats its clients own or are about to buy, and buys none to resell. A job can be one fix, or a strip-out to the bare fibreglass hull and a new interior. The company website lists three ways of working with clients:
| Project | What it covers | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Small | one problem solved | £2,000–5,000 |
| Medium | personalisation and upgrades | £50,000–100,000 |
| Large | engineering work, full new interior | £150,000 to over £1 million |
According to the company's official website, projects take between three weeks and five months. One 2004 Princess 61 got Sleipner stabiliser fins; other boats got bespoke interiors, new lighting or sound insulation. For this year's Southampton International Boat Show, Setag billed a rebuilt 2014 Princess 72 as its exhibit.
Setag's own website counts 25 projects delivered in 2025, more than 100 since 2021, and 20 staff at the end of 2025. At first it worked mostly on Princess, Sunseeker and Fairline boats, the brands its people knew. Now it takes on yachts of any brand.
Chris Gates and the team from Princess
Gates joined Princess as a technical engineering apprentice and rose to managing director three decades later. When he stepped down as managing director in June 2019, executive chairman Antony Sheriff said: "Chris's contribution to our company's success is immeasurable and it is fitting that Chris's last year as MD has been the most successful in our company's history." He stayed on as a special adviser to the executive chairman. By his own account on the Setag site, Princess revenue grew from £30 million to £340 million under him.
He says he spotted the opening during the pandemic and ahead of Brexit. A typical used yacht had come to cost £300,000 to £5 million, and nobody offered its owner a full refit of the kind superyachts get. At the superyacht end, Feadship's refit division has six yachts in its Dutch yards at once. Head of production Kyle Spellman and design director Sarah Luck both came from Princess, and Adam Greenwood was design and technical director at Fairline. "People trusted us from the get-go," said Ellie Gates, Setag's marketing executive.
Why is demand for refits growing?
"It's a difficult time for the industry at the moment. Everyone's struggling. New boat prices have gone a bit crazy," Ellie Gates told Marine Industry News. Setag puts a used boat at about a third of the price of a new one, with a worn interior and old electronics, and calls the rebuild its "third way". On the price jump when an owner moves up to a bigger new boat, she said: "We're trying to fill in the gap." Waiting lists push some buyers to used boats as well, and many long-time owners are attached to the boat they have and would rather modernise it than buy a new one.
In May one broker, Richard Bates of Bates Wharf, told Marine Industry News that new boats from the big builders had got dearer since the pandemic, while boats ten to twelve years old had held their prices.
What is happening at Princess, Sunseeker and Fairline today?
In January powerboat.news described a split market: wealthy buyers still buy premium boats, the rest have stopped. The middle, 33 to 68 feet, where Princess and Fairline have traditionally sold well, fell hardest. It put recent losses at three British yards at over £300 million and blamed Brexit, higher labour costs, a strong pound and US tariffs.
Princess, owned by KPS Capital Partners since 2023, announced about 250 job cuts in December 2024. Its revenue fell to £321.8 million in 2025 from £378.1 million, which the company puts down to building fewer boats for a weaker market. It still made an operating profit of £17.6 million, after a loss of £8.1 million the year before. Its 27-metre X90 had its world premiere at Cannes in September.
Sunseeker was sold by Dalian Wanda in autumn 2024 and announced about 200 redundancies in June 2025. Andrea Frabetti, chief executive at the time, blamed US tariffs and said more than half its output went to the United States. On 28 July this year its lenders took ownership and Scott Millar became chief executive.
Fairline went into administration in January 2025, weeks after being sold, and Bronzewood Capital bought its assets in April. At Cannes this year orders for the Targa 47, a model already in production, meant that, in chief operations officer Pete Hamlyn's words, "one whole production line's been filled for a year, from one show."
Setag in Spain
The base at Port Denia, between Valencia and Alicante, opened in 2025. The yard there takes in yachts and can lift boats up to 65 metres long out of the water. A Spanish manager heads it, and for now it runs from the Plymouth company.
Photo: Setag Yachts. Source: Marine Industry News, Setag Yachts, MBY, powerboat.news.
