Feadship fundamentally believes that the future has to be different. Traditional luxury standards such as quality, craftsmanship and rarity with a price premium, while important, are just part of the package.

Now, clients want to see corporate social responsibility and sustainability as part of a shipyard’s overall brand. Feadship, alongside developing shipbuilding technology, has spent considerable sums on their own facilities so that the environmental footprint of both yacht and shipyard are considered as one. There is a fine line as to whether a shipyard should develop future technology or a client should challenge them to do so. Feadship has made a commitment that the industry needs to match: to deliver emission-free yachts by 2025 and an emission-free construction process by 2030.

Part of this is building yachts capable of using alternative fuels – even a combination of fuels. Hydrogen and diesel is a possibility. Tier III regulations have made the industry progress with cleaner fuels, including bio-diesel that is not even a fossil fuel. Availability is one issue to be overcome, but as strategic industry we can drive this development. SCR is an acronym for technology that almost reduces NOx exhaust toxins to zero. The only issue has been the need for a large tank to hold the neutralising liquid. Feadship has developed Oxywash© to solve all of these problems.

Clients, designers and shipyards have to work together to refocus the concept of the private yacht. For example, to integrate electric, hydrogen, synthetic, solar and wind. Enlightened clients drive progress.

Heesen is a Dutch builder of aluminium and steel custom and semi-custom superyachts that offer speed, style and fuel-efficient cruising. Our design, engineering and construction methods continue to evolve and our unrelenting focus on quality, craftsmanship and innovation has created one of the world’s most impressive shipbuilding legacies.

When building our workforce we look for suppliers who can deliver quality with an emphasis on sustainability and future-proofing the lifecycle of a yacht. We were the first shipyard to pioneer an optimised hull form for fuel efficiency (the Fast Displacement Hull Form), and the first to install the Hull Vane® (an underwater wing that harnesses the power of the waves and transforms it into forward motion) in collaboration with Dutch hydrodinamicists Van Oossanen. We are the first shipyard to build an IMO Tier III-compliant fast-cruising yacht below 500GT with Aquamarine. And we continue to build upon our hybrid propulsion offering, equipped with economic mode.

The shipyard is always exploring renewable and alternative energy sources for our yachts and facilities, including harnessing solar power. The patented Sun Tracker technology installed on the roof of our construction halls and offices in Oss automatically dims the interior LED lighting to avoid wasting energy on days where natural sunlight is sufficient. This reduces the shed’s lighting requirements by 25% while our inverter heat pumps increase our facility’s year-round efficiency. And as example of our continuous effort to reduce single-use plastic and waste, all Heesen employees are given a Dopper water bottle customised with their names.