It is considered the rowing Olympics. Since 1879, the Bandera de la Concha, the most important trawler regatta of the year, has been celebrated in San Sebastián on the first two Sundays of September. “Did you know that this sport, where the fastest wins, actually comes from fishing? The boat that rowed the fastest returned to the port first with the sardines and could sell them at a better price at the fish market,” says Jesús Astondoa, CEO of the shipyards that bear his last name.
Astondoa is the third generation, and also the third Jesús, of a family of Basque origin dedicated to shipbuilding since 1916. First they were auxiliary and inshore fishing boats in their shipyard and carpentry shop in Portugalete. The Virgen de Guía, a famous trawler that won several regattas in the 1920s and 1930s, was also created there.
The Civil War put a stop to the company's activity, although later, after the World War, it revived strongly with the construction of rescue boats for merchants and the specialization in large fishing boats, always made of wood. The big change and the beginning of the company's conversion towards the world of recreation came when the founder's son, second generation, decided to move his construction activity to Santa Pola, Alicante, at the end of the seventies. There he had already worked occasionally and decided to establish himself to cover a sector with a lot of potential: yachts and boats for a new bourgeoisie increasingly interested in enjoying the sea on their own boats, a market in which they had also begun to work on their second shipyard, the from Santurce.
“The choice of this part of Alicante was strategic: it is the same distance from the Costa del Sol as from Barcelona and we are very close to Ibiza and Mallorca. Proximity to our clients was and still is king,” says the CEO. He actively joined the company when the family moved to Santa Pola, where he gained a good portfolio of clients, initially Spanish, although due to the quality of his constructions he gained ground in the European market. First, working in wood with new designs and then specializing in boats with polyester resin reinforced with fiberglass. This material launched the company in terms of production and variety.
Thanks to the economic boom of the nineties, pleasure boats of increasingly greater length were built. A new boat production center was also built in Almansa and the main shipyard was relocated to the port of Santa Pola. There they entered the interesting sector of megayachts: boats of more than 130 feet, equivalent to 40 meters. Then came the crash: 2008, which wiped out a good part of the sector in Spain, although this family business resisted, entering new markets outside Europe, such as Central America, Mexico, the Emirates and the United States.
“One of the keys to our success in these markets is our flexibility and involving future shipowners in the decision process to make their boat unique and tailored to their needs,” comments Ione Astondoa, head of marketing and communication for the company. . At 29 years old, she is the first director of the company and a member of a fourth generation that comes with enthusiasm to a purely family company and that did not accept purchase offers from large investors. Today she owns three shipyards in the provinces of Albacete, Almería and Alicante. Between these three centers 250 people work and in 2022 their turnover was 22.7 million euros.
