Moonen Yachts

From de Ruiter to Moonen

Moonen's roots run to 1963, when the de Ruyter brothers opened Scheepswerf de Ruiter in 's-Hertogenbosch to build small cruisers for the local Dutch market. Two decades later the yard ran into financial trouble, and in 1981 it was bought by Rien Moonen, a self-made entrepreneur who had started out running his father's painting business before moving into real estate and, eventually, boats. Moonen renamed the yard after himself and steered it toward something new: steel-hulled, aluminum-superstructure pocket superyachts built to cross oceans rather than idle at a marina. The first Moonen-branded yacht, Lady M, was delivered that same year, and the formula has barely changed since: a semi-custom motor yacht, built in limited numbers, aimed at owners who want a genuinely seaworthy boat rather than a floating apartment.

Under Rien Moonen the yard built its reputation on that formula for four decades, eventually delivering more than 80 yachts and settling into a production rhythm of roughly two yachts a year, deliberately capped so each build gets direct attention rather than being handed to a project manager juggling several hulls at once. A second, larger shed opened at Groot-Ammers in 2008, giving Moonen room to build up to 45 meters alongside the original 's-Hertogenbosch works, while final outfitting and sea trials for most yachts now happen from the yard's berths at Hellevoetsluis on the North Sea coast. Rien Moonen remained the face of the company until his death in March 2021 in Spain, by which point ownership had already passed to new hands.

Saved by an accidental buyer

That new ownership arrived almost by chance. In the late 2010s the yard slid into financial difficulty and, by 2019, liquidation. An Australian couple, Matthew and Louise Baxter, had bought a 25.7 meter Moonen named Aurora after spotting her on Pittwater Harbour near Sydney. When they discovered the builder that made her was going under, they did not simply go looking for another yacht. They bought the shipyard instead, taking control in August 2019. Matthew Baxter, who had built his fortune manufacturing roller shutters for the transport and industrial sectors through his A M Group, was not a yacht-industry veteran, but he backed the existing team and the existing formula rather than reinventing either.

The Baxter era has been steady, unglamorous rebuilding rather than reinvention. Moonen began laying down hulls on a semi-speculative basis, starting construction ahead of a signed buyer to shorten delivery windows, and leaned harder into the narrow 34 to 40 meter size range where it already had a following. The yard's technical leadership has been just as stable: Nicky van Zon joined Moonen in 2008 as an assistant project manager fresh out of naval architecture studies, rose to project manager in 2014 and technical director in 2020, and was named managing director in 2025, giving the company a continuity through its ownership change that few rivals its size can claim.

The Martinique platform

Moonen's current range runs to a handful of semi-custom platforms, and the 122 Martinique is the flagship. The line began in 2018 as Project Martinique: the first hull, Brigadoon, launched that June and was delivered a month later, going on to win a World Superyacht Award. The formula behind Brigadoon has stayed fixed ever since: exterior lines by Rene van der Velden Yacht Design, naval architecture by Diana Yacht Design and a steel hull with an aluminum superstructure, while the interior is treated as a genuinely open brief. Brigadoon's interior came from Nauta Yachts; later hulls have gone to Studio Indigo, Hollander Yacht Design and Vripack, each owner choosing a different studio to make the same platform feel like their own boat rather than a sistership.

That formula has proved durable. Eight hulls of the 122 Martinique had been delivered by mid-2026, with Lollipop the eighth, and a ninth hull, sold in December 2025 to an American family for delivery in January 2027, was already under construction, alongside a tenth reported in build. Moonen's own sales team has pointed to the pace of that order book, four Moonen contracts signed in 2025 alone, as evidence the platform's mix of steel-hull reassurance and semi-custom freedom is finding a wider, increasingly American audience beyond the yard's traditional European client base.

Where it sits in the market

At somewhere around 25.5 to 27 million euro depending on specification and delivery slot, the 122 Martinique undercuts the big flagship yards, names like Feadship, Heesen and Amels, on both size and price, and competes more directly with other Dutch and European semi-custom builders working in steel and aluminum at the 35 to 40 meter mark. Its low, level-decked profile and steel hull are a deliberate throwback at a size where most competitors have moved to aluminum or composite construction and taller, more resort-style superstructures aimed at charter guests rather than long-range owners.

Moonen is not trying to be the biggest or the flashiest name at the dock. It is a yard that has chosen to stay small on purpose, building two yachts a year with one fixed design team and one production line, and the 122 Martinique is the clearest expression of that choice: a genuinely capable ocean-crossing steel yacht built by people who know the owner's name, aimed squarely at buyers who would rather have that than a bigger badge on the stern.