Yesterday, YACHT online reported that Thinius boss Kühn himself had admitted in an email to a Dutch charter agency that his company was - literally - "insolvent". Neither he nor his company's employees were available for comment on Wednesday morning. Kühn is now recanting his own statement.
As he told the editorial team today, none of his three companies are insolvent. Kühn explains the problems at Thinius on Mallorca and in Lemmer as follows:
"I made a mistake in the wording of the email to the agency in question. According to the facts, I should have written about payment difficulties. For all GmbHs and the Spanish SLU, no insolvency has been applied for and no insolvency proceedings are ongoing."
Kühn writes about the causes of the financial problems: "In January, ten yachts were taken out of the fleet on Mallorca. This made it difficult to serve customers who had already booked on these yachts. As a result, there were rebookings and cancellations, despite a great deal of effort on our part. As a result, the costs were many times higher than calculated, as yachts had to be chartered through third-party providers. As a result, liquidity became increasingly low and there were payment bottlenecks, especially at the end of the season."
Kühn continues: "Due to these payment difficulties, I decided to restructure myself and asked a consultant for help." The consultant in question is a long-standing business partner. According to Kühne, he is "making every effort to reorganise Thinius and respond to the new revenue situation by adjusting costs in order to return to profitability."
In an interview with YACHT online, the charter company owner expressed his determination to build on the former successes of his 28-year-old company. The extent to which this can succeed will, of course, only be revealed by the reorganisation concept, which Kühn says is still being worked on.
Andreas Fritsch
Editor Travel
