Dubai's Romeo Marine Delivers Its First 55-Metre at $35m

What is Al Hanem 2 and who built her?

Al Hanem 2 is a 54.4-metre, 780GT superyacht built entirely in-house by Romeo Marine at Dubai Maritime City, the first hull in the yard's new Romeo 55 series, and she has now completed sea trials with a listed price of USD 35 million through Burgess.

The yacht is built to Lloyds classification with a steel hull and aluminium superstructure, and Romeo Marine handled the naval architecture itself rather than commissioning an outside studio, a decision that keeps design authority and warranty responsibility for the hull entirely in-house. Interior design went to Pulina Exclusive Design Studio, which built the layout around what the yard calls a concept of light and space: floor to ceiling glazing on the lower decks, a sculptural spiral staircase, and a panoramic lift running the full height of the yacht. She carries six double cabins plus an owner's suite for 12 to 14 guests, twin MTU 12V engines giving a 16 knot top speed and a 10 knot cruise, four zero speed stabilisers, and a 5,500 nautical mile range.

Sea trials ran out of Bin Rashid Marina, and Romeo Marine says the yacht performed extremely well with very high stability through the programme, though that verdict comes from the yard itself and not from an independent surveyor or class society report published so far. Al Hanem 2 was originally slated for a first quarter 2026 delivery; she instead made her public debut at the Monaco Yacht Show in the week of 23 to 26 September, arriving complete rather than as a work in progress, which is the more common way a new yard actually shows up at Monaco.

How long has Romeo Marine been in business and why has nobody heard of it until now?

Romeo Marine was founded in Dubai in 2008, built on the four decade history of Romeo Interiors, and Al Hanem 2 marks its first real entrance onto the international superyacht circuit after eighteen years of largely unpublicised work.

The yard's own facility runs to more than 250,000 square feet, over 23,000 square metres, in Dubai Maritime City, and Romeo Marine says it can build vessels up to 120 metres across four decks with hull creation, engineering, interiors and finishing all handled in one place rather than farmed out to subcontractors. That in-house model is closer to how Feadship or Heesen describe their own operations than to a typical Gulf fit-out yard, which is part of why trade press has taken to calling Romeo Marine a hidden gem: a builder with the physical capability to compete at the top of the market that simply never put a hull in front of Monaco or Fort Lauderdale buyers before this year. The Romeo Marine name itself grew out of Romeo Interiors, a marine interior design studio with its own four decade history, which is why the yard came to full hull construction already fluent in the fit-out side of the business rather than treating interiors as a bought-in service.

Romeo Marine's chief executive Nader Nashed put the moment plainly: the launch of the Romeo 55 marks not only a milestone for our shipyard but also a pivotal moment for Dubai's superyacht industry. That framing matters for an owner reading this from outside the region: Romeo Marine is asking to be judged as a first-tier build yard, not as a regional curiosity, and Al Hanem 2 is the only hard evidence anyone outside the company has yet had to judge that claim against.

Is Romeo Marine building anything bigger than the Romeo 55?

Romeo Marine has already laid the keel on a 60 metre Romeo 60, styled externally by Gresham Yacht Design and set to carry 12 guests, which signals the Romeo 55 is meant as an opening model in a series rather than a one-off showpiece built purely to attract attention at Monaco.

Gresham Yacht Design is the same studio that renamed itself Gresham Marshall in late August, and its involvement gives the Romeo 60 an exterior pedigree independent of Romeo Marine's own in-house team, a different approach from the fully in-house Romeo 55. Pairing an established outside naval architecture and styling house with Romeo Marine's in-house build and interior capability is a common pattern for a yard trying to move upmarket quickly, since it borrows credibility on the one part of the boat, the silhouette, that buyers judge before they ever step aboard.

For an owner watching the wider Gulf shipbuilding scene, Romeo Marine is not appearing in isolation. Dubai already has an established leisure yacht exporter in Gulf Craft, and Grandweld Shipyards, a 40 year Dubai Maritime City commercial builder, used the same Monaco Yacht Show week to announce its own move into 60 metre and larger yachts. Two Dubai yards reaching for the same 55 to 65 metre bracket in the same show week is the clearest sign yet that the emirate intends to be judged as a genuine third build hub alongside the Netherlands and Germany axis and the Italian yards, not simply a place that fits out hulls built somewhere else.

Is $35 million a good price for Al Hanem 2, and what is the catch?

At USD 35 million for a 780GT, 54.4 metre yacht with Lloyds classification and a four deck layout, Al Hanem 2 undercuts what a Dutch or Italian yard typically charges for comparable volume, but she carries none of the resale history, class-society trial documentation, or brand premium that a Feadship, Heesen or Sanlorenzo hull of similar size commands on the secondhand market.

That trade-off is the honest way to read a first-of-series hull from a yard making its public debut: the price reflects genuine value in raw volume and specification, not a discount for a flaw anyone has identified. Nothing published so far points to a defect in Al Hanem 2's build or systems. The gap is entirely about the things time creates rather than the things a surveyor can inspect today: a resale track record, a population of sister ships to compare her against, and an owner community that can report back on how the boat behaves after a full season rather than a set of sea trials run by the yard that built her.

What is not yet published matters here as much as what is. There is no independent sea trial report, no class society bulletin beyond the Lloyds classification itself, and no named owner or delivery captain willing to speak on the record about how she handles in a seaway. A buyer who wants that kind of verification before committing to a first hull of any new series, from any yard, should expect to wait for the second or third boat, by which point Romeo Marine's own Romeo 60 will likely have generated the independent commentary Al Hanem 2 does not yet have, and a wider population of Romeo 55 owners, if the model sells again, will have started to settle the resale question this first sale cannot answer alone.