‘Export sales are fundamental to our success,’ Nisbet started. ‘Princess has a worldwide distributor portfolio that provides unrivalled access to international customers.’

We work extremely hard gathering intelligence, he added, using UKTI and the OMIS research scheme. ‘We’ll travel to the markets to form our own opinions and establish key players. We also work with the BMF’s market visit programmes and events to identify developing areas.’

Princess pools information from its distributors, international publications and the Internet and relates it to market facilities and infrastructure before committing resources.

‘Strong partners are instrumental to success, as is financial strength, excellent service, customer support and access to the best marina facilities. Good contacts are essential; these may be through high-level business or family links, often government connections. All these influence our decision to proceed.

Which regions did he believe have the best potential? ‘Asia is the new Europe; a huge long-term growth opportunity. We also have developments in India, China, Hong Kong, Singapore, The Philippines, Thailand, Mauritius and Australia. We’re also working in Eastern Europe and the Baltic States.’

He said Spain had been given a significant lift with its marina development programme, which should lead to major growth for Princess. ‘We would like to see a similar programme in France.’

In the immediate future, Nisbet says Princess has increased its boat size and will maintain this policy. ‘Production volumes will increase on the larger vessels and we’ll see a four-fold increase in boats over 80 ft.’

We expect a 20% growth rate per annum, he said. ‘We now have five sites in Plymouth with a million square feet of space, an industry leading level of production sophistication and our 1700 employees will build 400 boats during the next year..