Cheoy Lee

A highly regarded shipyard with a very long history, Cheoy Lee has transitioned in recent decades from being primarily a sailing yacht builder esteemed for its traditional craftsmanship to a broad-based, forward-looking shipyard that produces tugboats, ferries, pilot boats and other commercial vessels as well as offering a steady output of superyachts for sale. It also continues to build sub-100ft motor yachts under a separate brand identity, CL Yachts.

Cheoy Lee is headquartered in Kowloon, Hong Kong and still has a repair shipyard there but its main production facility is in mainland China – a large, modern, purpose-built complex at Doumen, just across the mouth of the Pearl River from Macao.

There’s a 1,000-ton railway lift on site, plus a 150-ton travel lift, dedicated fabrication halls for steel, aluminium and fibreglass hulls of up to 70m (230ft) in length, an impressive array of hi-tech shipbuilding machinery and equipment, and dormitories for more than 1,000 employees. As an adjunct to the shipyard’s main locations, Cheoy Lee also has a sales and marketing office in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

If you browse its range of yachts for sale you will notice that Cheoy Lee is unusual in its ability to build yachts and other vessels in either steel, aluminium or fibreglass composites, or any combination of the three. It differentiates itself from other Chinese shipyards by sourcing the best components internationally rather than building with locally sourced materials and routinely works with all major classification and certification bodies. The shipyard’s top management is the fourth and fifth generation of the Lo family who have owned and controlled it for 150 years.

The shipyard’s output includes full custom superyachts and platforms for semi-custom builds. For anyone interested in buying a yacht then at the time of writing, the semi-custom options are a 33m (107ft) explorer yacht and a 36m (118ft) motor yacht, plus the three smaller series in the CL Yacht range. For a full description of those yachts, see our profile of CL Yachts.