How It Began

Traditionally, the Caribbean has a less well-established reputation than Europe or the USA for delivering high quality and technical support – something that has tended be a psychological barrier for investors looking to set up a commercial superyacht interest within the region. So how did IMM get its start?

IMM began when our founder, Fabrice Maitre, captured international headlines in 2008 by achieving what the world said was impossible – the seven-month refit of 126m megayacht Octopus – on time and on budget. A highly experienced yachtsman at the time, with already 25 years’ experience in major refit and repair, this was still something new entirely – the world’s largest ever refit project at the time, and all executed outside a traditional shipyard.

Its success became the seed of an idea: that it was possible to deliver quality, complex and challenging refit and maintenance without the traditional limitations imposed by the industry; that we ought to be delivering it in locations where owners needed it most, but with the service structure and international compliance standards of a fixed operation; and that the premium refit industry was currently starved of this kind of globally relevant service. International Marine Management (IMM) was born.

Partnering with Harvard Law-trained litigator Norina Edelman – bringing her complementary financial and legal skills to the development of IMM’s logistics, planning and service operations – IMM began with the founding of a technical base in Guadeloupe. From here, we could carry out European-standard maintenance on yachts in the Caribbean, a region with a high incidence of vessels in need of work but sorely lacking premium refit services.

It struck a chord: Fifteen years of continuous business and reputational growth later, and having instilled the founders’ principles and values in the next generation of IMM technicians and project managers, the company’s latest evolution sees us come full circle: With “IMM @way,” our yard services now migrate fully to you – wherever you are. We are still Caribbean based, but no longer Caribbean bound, finally fulfilling Fabrice and Norina’s founding vision: to deliver high-quality, logistically complex refit and repair to you anywhere on the planet.

2000 to the Present Day

“Frankly, there are more similarities than differences when conducting refit work in the Caribbean and the Mediterranean – the jobs are the same, the urgency is the same and the required quality is the same. The main differences in working in non-traditional refit locations these days tend to be differences of degree rather than of substance.

“The refit sector needs to respond a lot better to a yacht’s technical needs on a yacht’s own terms,” continues Maitre, who has managed projects on some of the world’s largest vessels. “You have to take into account two things – where the yacht actually is and its availability.