SAERTEX MATERIALS USED TO PRODUCE HACO SHIPYARD’S NEW BALI CATSPACE CATAMARAN

HACO Shipyard is located in El Haouaria, Tunisia, and produces BALI Catamarans. The Tunisian shipyard is part of the French company CATANA Group, the world’s third-largest manufacturer of catamarans and well known for its luxury yachts. In less than a year, SAERTEX^® partnered with HACO to develop a new catamaran with an entire deck processed with the RTM method. 

THE IDEA

In 2018, HACO Shipyard came to us with a new catamaran concept – BALI CATSPACE – that would greatly increase the amount of onboard space. The major challenge with the new design would be to produce one full catamaran every two days. HACO Shipyard already used vacuum infusion, RTM and hand lay-up to produce some of their parts. Now, SAERTEX marine specialists had to find a way to produce an entire 12 m x 6 m deck in one piece using the RTM process, which would save an extensive amount of time. 

REINFORCING THIS IDEA

A full technical evaluation was carried out to find the best solution for the CATSPACE project. In the end we chose SAERcore® Max because it delivers significant time savings in terms of resin flow speed. It is also ideal for large parts when time for resin transfer is limited. In combination with SAERfix®, the mold filling time was also drastically reduced. SAERfoam® was chosen because it is much stronger than PVC, especially for long components. In addition, SAERTEX developed project-specific SAERcore Max and SAERfoam kits to substantially reduce the amount of time HACO Shipyard spent cutting and draping.

TECHNICAL BENEFITS

1. Time savings during the production process
2. Lightweight and stiff
3. RTM method to produce one large part (12 m x 6 m)

THE SUCCESS STORY

Thanks to the successful teamwork among the project partners, it took less than a year to develop and execute a new catamaran design with an entire deck processed using the RTM method. BALI CATSPACE catamarans can now be seen on the seas and in boat shows all over the world, and SAERTEX materials continue to provide huge time savings during the production of other catamaran models at HACO Shipyard.