Norfolk Yacht Agency buys St Olaves Marina for £2m

Norfolk Yacht Agency, which has sales sites at Brundall Bay and Ferry Marina in Horning, has purchased Great Yarmouth's St Olaves Marina on the River Waveney.

The 12-acre marina has 150 moorings and hard standing for 80 boats, with the acquisition more than doubling Norfolk Yacht Agency’s current mooring capacity.

St Olaves Marina on the River Waveney (Image: Supplied) St Olaves Marina is also home to a 50-tonne boat hoist which will enable the firm to handle larger vessels.

“St Olaves will give us another sales site on a third large river – we’re on the Bure, the Yare and now the Waveney,” said James Fraser, owner and managing director of Norfolk Yacht Agency.

James Fraser, owner and managing director of Norfolk Yacht Agency (Image: Denise Bradley)Alongside boat sales, Norfolk Yacht Agency offers a range of servicing, repair and maintenance services (Image: Supplied) “We regularly now get larger boats which are bigger than what we can handle in Brundall, so having the ability to lift bigger boats is very useful.

“When these sites become available for sale they are once in a lifetime opportunities. There are very few big, good-quality yards around.”

St Olaves Marina (Image: Denise Bradley) Norfolk Yacht Agency employs 20 people and is the region's largest new and used boat sales centre. It also offers a range of servicing, repair and maintenance services.

Mr Fraser started working for the company as a salesman in 1989, before later buying the business in 2003.

Norfolk Yacht Agency purchased St Olaves Marina from the Bromley family, who had owned the site since the 1990s.

St Olaves Marina (Image: Denise Bradley) The Nemesis - a vessel used to intercept whaling boats - at St Olaves Marina last year (Image: Denise Bradley) “We’ve been gradually growing and acquiring moorings and workshops over the last 22 years,” Mr Fraser said.

"We now offer a whole package, so if someone buys a boat we can moor it, store it, lift it, anti-foul it, and service it – we can do everything the customer needs.

"We’ve just been through a really good time during the post-Covid boom. I’ve never known anything like it in my 30 years in the job - the demand for boats was massive."