Princess Yachts has announced that is has been awarded a Princess Royal Training Award for its apprenticeship scheme, awards are selected by Her Royal Highness The Princess Royal and the president of City & Guilds Group to recognise organisations whose training has delivered measurable business impact.

“We are so pleased to be awarded a Princess Royal Training Award for our apprenticeship programme,” comments Alis Thompson, head of learning & development at Princess Yachts. “The assessment process was rigorous and very different this year taking place remotely via MS Teams. However, the assessors took the time to peak to some of our apprentices and to gain a better understanding of our collaborative partnership with South Devon College who support us in the delivery of our programme. It is great to know we are setting the right standards, experience and support to our apprentices as they begin their career with us and ultimately the marine industry.”

Princess Yachts’ apprenticeship scheme further deserves recognition for its continued recruitment efforts throughout the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown via digital platforms. In 2020, Princess Yachts will welcome a record number of apprenticeships across all areas of the business. According to the Princes Royal Training Award judges, as a 2020 winner of the award, Princess Yachts has demonstrated “exceptional commitment to training, despite facing unprecedented challenges of COVID019”.

Princess Yachts won the award for ‘positioning apprenticeships as a viable career choice’. Princess was recognised for having invested in its apprenticeship programme to ensure that is has a strong talent pipeline in place. In fact, 10 per cent of the current managers at Princess Yachts are former apprentices.

Typically, when the superyacht industry is represented in the mainstream media the articles and images are largely focussed on the cost of the assets themselves, or variously the wealth profiles of the owners and guests. While this is by no means surprising, given that the lives of the ultra-wealth will always be of curious interested to the layman, it is a shame that rich manufacturing stories of the industry are constantly overlooked. While it is unlikely that the recognition of Princess Yachts’ apprenticeship programme will reach the general media, it is nonetheless pleasing to see a business within the market receiving the credit that it is due.

According to The Superyacht Agency, Princess Yachts has delivered an average of 3.3 superyacht projects per year since 2010 with its most prolific coming in 2019 when it delivered seven 30m-plus projects. It is expected that Princess Yachts will deliver three vessels in 2020 with an average LOA of 30.5m

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