Karen Groenewald is a highly experienced Project and Quality Manager with more than 25 years of expertise within South Africa’s internationally recognised yacht manufacturing industry. Her career has been defined by operational discipline, production integration, quality assurance leadership, and the successful delivery of complex marine manufacturing projects from concept through to launch.
With extensive experience in both project management and quality control environments, Karen brings a structured, analytical, and solutions-driven approach to production operations. She has developed a strong reputation for improving manufacturing workflows, aligning cross-functional teams, and implementing systems that enhance efficiency, accountability, and product quality.
Throughout her career, Karen has worked with some of Cape Town’s leading catamaran and yacht manufacturers, overseeing large-scale yacht programmes and coordinating multi-disciplinary production teams across complex build environments. Her experience spans tooling, prototyping, launch preparation, internal auditing, compliance management, and production integration across multiple manufacturing phases.
Karen has played a key role in the successful integration and quality management of internationally recognised sailing and power catamaran models, ensuring that production systems, quality frameworks, and operational processes align with demanding international standards.
More recently, she has led multiple concurrent manufacturing projects while establishing comprehensive quality assurance frameworks for new product development. She has also been instrumental in improving production visibility and accountability through the implementation of reporting systems designed to monitor departmental performance, material flow, and manufacturing progress.
Her strengths include project and production planning, quality assurance systems development, departmental troubleshooting, resource coordination, and stakeholder communication. Karen’s ability to identify operational bottlenecks and implement practical corrective measures has consistently strengthened manufacturing performance and delivery outcomes.
Alongside her practical industry experience, Karen has continued to advance her formal qualifications, including a BCom in Project Management through Mancosa, a Project Management qualification through the University of Cape Town, and a Total Quality Management Diploma through UNISA.
Known for her professionalism, calm leadership style, and commitment to operational excellence, Karen brings deep institutional knowledge and technical manufacturing insight to Phoenix Marine Manufacturing.
Her work reflects a clear focus on quality, accountability, and continuous improvement — essential foundations in world-class yacht construction.
