Princess Yachts began in Plymouth in 1965 as Marine Projects (Plymouth) Ltd. The first boat, the Project 31, was fitted out in rented space on the Devon coast. The company took the Princess name over the following decades and grew into one of Britain's largest builders of luxury motor yachts. Today it employs around 3,200 people and remains one of the biggest private employers in the city. Its boats reach owners in more than a hundred countries.
The business now spans five sites across Plymouth, covering well over a million square feet of production space. The most significant of these is South Yard, released by the Royal Navy in 2012 from the historic Devonport base. That waterfront site gave Princess the deep-water access and covered halls needed to build its largest yachts up to 40 metres. Ownership has passed through several hands, most recently to KPS Capital Partners in 2023, after earlier backing from Bernard Arnault's group and later L Catterton. Through those changes the boats have stayed British-built in Plymouth.
Almost every modern Princess owes its shape to Bernard Olesinski. The naval architect began working with the yard in 1980, drawing the 30DS, and the relationship has run for more than four decades since. Olesinski established his own studio in 1972 and made an early name with deep-V planing hulls for the leisure market. That hull philosophy became the signature of the Princess range and still underpins the way its boats ride today.
The studio does far more than draw waterlines. It handles naval architecture and structural engineering, and develops each hull in house. In-house software helps refine the form for weight and for the way it behaves at sea. The deep-V shapes are tuned for a comfortable ride in a seaway rather than headline numbers alone. Since 2013 the practice has extended into larger superyacht work, which mirrors Princess's own growth into the 40-metre class.
Princess organises its boats into clear classes, each with a distinct job. The V Class covers planing sports yachts built for pace and open cockpit living. The F Class holds the flybridge cruisers that form the core of the line, while the S Class sits between sport and fly with a low sportbridge. Above them the Y Class gathers the larger motor yachts, and the M Class carries the 40-metre flagship. This structure lets a buyer move up in size while staying within a familiar language of layout and style.
The X Class marked the boldest break from that pattern. Launched with the X95, first shown at Boot Dusseldorf in 2019, it introduced what Princess calls the Super Flybridge. A raised wheelhouse frees the whole main deck for interior use, and a near full-length upper deck adds a large volume of outdoor and sheltered space. Princess claims the format offers far more interior room than a conventional flybridge yacht of similar length. A wave-piercing bow developed with Olesinski improves efficiency over a standard deep-V of the same size.
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