Benetti for Life

Another press release arrived, another new project lands in the market, with a well-known design team, “Oino & Zuretti”, a big brokerage house behind the specification and build, Burgess, on the case and lots of superlatives – spacious, expansive, unforgettable and, the new favourite, breathtaking.

Then, when describing the new 85-metre project, as you’d expect, it has everything you need listed: a beach club, huge dining salon, owner’s deck, big tenders, bigger windows and a list of innovative technology and highly efficient systems.

Now, you’ll forgive me for not writing copious amounts of words about this new project, as the various PR platforms have already done so, sharing the above almost verbatim. Yes, it’s impressive. The renderings sell the concept perfectly,and it’s a wonderfully large 85-metre engineering platform from the world’s leading yacht builder, Benetti.

It’s what you’d expect from this Project Life Team. However, over the years, we’ve seen some excellent engineering platforms in the 80-metre category; referring back to our story in last year’s Owner Edition, The Superyacht Report 222, where we looked closely at the 80-metre plus market, where Oceanco, Amels, Abeking and Feadship have all enjoyed success in this sector. In fact, with the Alfa Nero series at Oceanco, this was perhaps the start of the category, then with the new Amels 80-metre success and the recent Simply Custom portfolio from Oceanco again, it seems that this is the future sweet spot for the market.

So, let’s jump back to the Benetti Life Project, an 85-metre project that sits at the top of the hierarchy of the Benetti portfolio, discounting the 100-metre trio they built during a bit of a feeding frenzy in the ultra-large sector. It seems like the word “Life” fits perfectly all of their future plans, with the recent “Life Cycle” announcement with Benetti and Lusben becoming a more harmonised service proposition.

When Project Life hit my inbox, I was excited to see the fleet expand and become almost complete. When I looked at the whole portfolio, it reminded me of the lifecycle of a frog that we probably all recall from school days, going from spawn to tadpole to frog in an evolutionary metamorphosis.

Therefore, we took all of the models currently in the portfolio and created a similar illustration to show how an owner can, in fact, enjoy their yachting lifestyle for the whole of their ownership journey with such a holistic portfolio from 34-metre Oasis to the new B.Now series, into the exciting and cool B.Loft 65-metre, all the way to the Benetti pinnacle, the ultimate achievement in the Benetti cycle of Life, the 85-metre Project Life.

Now, we all understand that Benetti is the current leader in the new-build sector in terms of units built and annual deliveries and with this Circle of Life, it’s easy to see why, with so much capacity and opportunity, but I actually think what’s been so impressive is their own metamorphosis in terms of style and design.

The creative shift to names like Cassetta, RWD and now Øino has transformed the portfolio away from some of the more predictable designs in the 2000s that almost have no place in this creative circle. The portfolio is now so complete that it’s hard to imagine a client starting their journey, maybe stepping out of the Azimut Grande range, into the metal fleet and then just being tempted and inspired to climb the ownership ladder with Team Petrozzi guiding the clients, who seem to always go B.Yond to get a deal done B.Now.

It’s hard to imagine a client looking outside the Circle of Trust. I recall a moment when an owner was taking delivery of his latest brand-new Benetti, only to be slightly distracted by the next one on the production line arriving at the shipyard, perhaps thinking, “Maybe I need to be looking at a bigger project”.

The idea of an owner always being exposed to a fleet of ever-increasing projects with new features, innovations and next-generation ideas must make it impossible for them not to ask the question: how much and when…?

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