Periodic Reporting for period 2 - ProZero (ProZero - carbon based fast boats for professional use)
Reporting period: 2017-04-01 to 2018-03-31
Tuco Marine Group ApS is pursuing a major market opportunity by developing and commercializing carbon fibre boats for professional use. More specifically, Tuco is targeting 3 categories of boats: i) Fast Rescue Boats (FRB), ii) Daughter Crafts (DC - boats used for transport between mother ships and oilrigs or windmill parks), and iii) Work Boats (WB) designed with a deck for different work purposes. The plan of the project are:
1. Design and develop moulds and tools for the scalable and cost-effective production of carbon fibre boats.
2. Showcase carbon based boats in operational use.
3. Develop the designs for a product range to complete the offering. The result will be a complete series of boats which can be built to order on the same platform, and thus without additional fix costs for each order.
4. Develop and implement a design portal, enabling customers to get access to the designs and drawings.
Although carbon has been successfully deployed in other vessel types, such as fast ferries, recreation and high-end racing yachts, the usage of carbon remains unproved in the market of fast boats for professional use. The commercial shipping industry is very conservative and it is thus necessary to demonstrate the benefits of carbon fibre in the targeted market before large-scale commercialization.
1) Tuco’s objective of pursuing market opportunities with carbon fiber based work boats and
2) a key design structure that carefully reflects the preferences and requirements of the end users while also
3) meeting the international regulations and requirements of classification companies.
The SME instrument funding plays an important strategic role in the future business development of TUCO. After assessing the feasibility of ProZero in the SME phase 1 project, we intend to pursue our strategic vision of introducing a new line of fast boats for professional use to the market.