THE INDUSTRY

While the breadth of the maritime industry is both its strength and weakness, unless the industry can utilise this breadth, it is going to continue to face these common challenges and these issues will have their impact felt across this £10 billion industry. 

The first exposure that many in the UK have to the maritime industry is the sport of sailing, from dinghies in inland reservoirs, driving powerboats, through to yachts sailing in some of the busiest locations for ship movements globally. This area of the industry is one which is often termed the “marine” industry or sometimes “leisure marine” and forms the underpinning of many people’s exposure to the wider maritime industry.

This area is where British boating focuses our efforts, as starting at the beginning of the industry recruitment pathway means our actions can radiate out beyond our own impact, like the flap of a butterfly’s wing. The marine industry faces challenges which are representative of the wider maritime industry, with the negative impacts of climate change, biofouling, the recruitment of new participants and the retention of existing participants, alongside COVID-19 and Brexit. Therefore, our actions to address these challenges will be applicable across the wider maritime industry. 

Despite the industry facing significant challenges, approximately 4 million people took part in boating in 2017 (Gibson, 2018), the marine leisure industry has been valued at £2.8 billion in 2018 (Cebr, 2019), out of an estimated 5,000 (UK Maritime Industries Alliance, 2021). The marine industry is built upon composites and aerofoil technologies which also underpin the aeronautics, automotive and wider chemical industries, but this has been systematically failed to be communicated.

These are some of the most innovative technologies globally currently (Singh et al. 2021), therefore; the lack of growth and profitability should not be the case and is a challenge that we aim to address.

To address these systemic failings, we propose the development of an organisation we are calling “British Boating”, whose sole purpose is to market, showcase and disseminate good practises within the marine industry, with a focus upon the leisure market and boating in particular. This campaign will target promoting the image of boating, not just as a sporting activity, but a career and source of innovation. We will aim to increase participation across the board within all sectors, including dramatically improving the current lack of diversity. This will be alongside actions to increase apprenticeships, college available degrees and other career pathways. We firmly believe that the potential of the marine industry and boating is not being realised through incoherent communication, which we intend to address.

By setting goals to be over a 10-year timescale, we are able to focus upon ambitious targets for improving the industry. We believe these are achievable; however, to be able to get there we are going to need to build strong industry links with all the leading governing bodies and heads in the industry. This will allow us to build a strong network and support base channelling increased engagement into the right area of the industry or leisure market.