March 1, 2020

Corona Virus Impact

Early 2020 Corona Virus is taking the World into an unexpected storm, with negative implications.  This outbreak which started in Wuhan, Hubei province in China late December 2019, has quickly spread World wide, and as I am writing this we have two curfew towns in Italy in the Lombardy and Veneto region.  
The economic implications of Corona Virus are also being directly felt in the yachting World, and so far we had the Singapore boat show schedule in early March postponed for October.  The Miami and Dusseldorf  boat shows, two of the most important shows in a calendar year went out as planned.  The Venice boat show, which started in 2019 and received a lot of positive feedback seems to be going as planned.
The above are the direct implications, as at today yacht production in China is fairly small, although  the parts catalogue might do a lot of bits and pieces the far East.  Yacht production is fairly cottage production, and a successful boat usually sells over one hundred units, and is also a fairly labour intensive and custom process, even if some boats do look the same. 
Off course beside all the above then there is the third party economic implication, how much will the Corona Virus economic crunch cost. 2020 was already forecast to be a slow year in World economic growth terms, some also calling it the beginning of a recession especially for the European economy.  Corona Virus might prove the bears right after all.

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