History
The company was formed by the merger of two shipbuilding companies Vosper Limited of Portsmouth and J I Thornycroft of Woolston, Southampton in 1966 at which time the Company became listed on the London Stock Exchange as Vosper Thornycroft. Vosper Ltd built small boats and J I Thornycroft had a long history of building destroyers and similar sized craft. The company was nationalised by the Labour Government in 1977, becoming a division of British Shipbuilders. It became a commercial company again after a management buyout in 1985.
Vosper Thornycroft flourished even during lean times for warship building, mainly through successful sales efforts in exports and diversification outside of the core shipbuilding business into training and support. In 1998, Vosper Thornycroft acquired the specialist military boatbuilder Halmatic, based in Portchester.
In 2001, in their most ambitious diversification project, VT started work on the US$55million superyacht Mirabella V for former Avis Car Hire boss Joe Vittoria. At the time of its completion in 2004, Mirabella V was the world's largest single-masted sailing vessel with an overall length of 75 metres and a mast height of approximately 87 metres.
From 2002, the overall business was known as VT Group plc.
Read more about this topic: VT Group
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