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NESTLED AWAY IN Youghal, a company with a disarmingly placid name is earning a growing global reputation for producing military-grade ‘stealth’ and gun boats.
Safehaven Marine, which has been trading for nearly two decades, builds specialist high-performance craft from start to finish in its Co Cork factory.
The company currently has one ‘stealth boat’, the Barracuda, on the market, but after 18 months in the factory and €1 million in investment it has a new, high-performance stablemate to show off – the Thunderchild.
Last year, Safehaven Marine made use of Storm Barbara’s testing conditions to prove the 18m-long high-speed boat’s resilience. Next, the craft, which is designed for military and law enforcement use, will be demonstrating its speed.
Frank Kowalski, the Thunderchild’s developer and head of Safehaven Marine, said the company plans to circumnavigate Ireland in 30 hours via the North Atlantic islet of Rockall in the vessel to attract the attention of potential clients.
Equipped with two, 1,000-horsepower engines, the boat is capable of reaching speeds of around 60 knots (111 km/hr).
“For any new design like this, you need to build a prototype, but then you need to start thinking how I can make the best use of this investment. That has led us on to setting a new record, which will prove the capabilities of the boat,” he said.
“If we can go to clients and say we have set a new record, it will give them confidence in the design and improve the reputation of the company.”
Humble beginnings
While Safehaven Marine has found itself a lucrative niche – the firm recorded a profit of more than €400,000 in 2015 and employs around 30 staff – the former fisherman’s business had humble beginnings.
“I was a commercial skipper and had a charter angling business,” Kowalski said. “I had a small boat with limited seating and decided I needed a larger boat, and the only way I could get one was by building it.”
The company began developing vessels for specialised tasks, such as pilot and patrol boats for harbour authorities.
However, the market for these pilot boats, which ferry harbour-based captains out to vessels to guide them to shore, was very small.
So Kowalski gambled on military hardware – investing €1 million into the development of the first stealth boat, the Barracuda.
The vessel’s shape and materials give it a low ‘radar cross section’ – meaning it is much harder to detect using radar than a traditional patrol boat.
“It was a natural progression … We had built a couple of normal commercial boats for a navy and were turning over around €5 million a year,” Kowalski said.
“But we couldn’t really see that increasing unless we broke into another market. So we decided to branch out into the military sector.
“We took a gamble that there would be a requirement for something like Baracuda. With anything like that, you can’t go along to an organisation and say this is an idea. You need to build a prototype to prove the design.”
Big deal
Since it was first set up, the company has developed 125 boats at its factory in Cork for clients from 26 countries spanning the Middle East, Asia, Europe and North America.
While Kowalski closely guards the identities of the organisations that purchase his boats, he confirmed that a big deal with a major European nation was on the near horizon.
“It’s a difficult and protracted process. We have taken off nearly three years to be able to generate a good military contract and now we’re on the cusp of signing a large naval contract,” he said.
But Kowalski added there was the possibility Safehaven Marine’s boats could also make their way into the hands of the general public with non-military specifications – although the vessels don’t come cheap, at around €1 million apiece.
“The design of Thunderchild means it can be built in any format – it could be a pleasure boat with nice accommodation.
“So potentially a rich Arab could come along and order these as a pleasure boat, but we don’t see that as a target market for us. Our aim is to make these for law enforcement agencies and navies.”
Increasing production
For now, there are no confirmed orders for the Thunderchild, but Kowalski said he expected the record attempt will shine a spotlight on the project.
“There is a lot of interest in Thunderchild. The existing contacts we have made are all watching us carefully to see how it goes.
“But we have to be realistic about what you can achieve, because any contract you do sign is going to involve bankrupting penalty clauses. So you have to be careful you don’t take on more than you can deliver.”
However, if the firm is successful in securing a large buyer, Kowalski added that it likely to significantly increase its current staff.
“We employ 25 to 30 people and, I suppose, if we were only focused on Thunderchild, we could produce seven or eight of them a year. So if we do get a large contract, we will have to expand by 100% really.
“All the existing work is forecast to stay on because it has proven very successful as a mainstay, so we could hopefully double our production.”
Written by Killian Woods and posted on Fora.ie
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Retrofitting is only available to the people with plenty of cash . Same as most other benefits .
All I read in the above article is that we need to lower our living standards drastically. I do not trust anyone who tells me we need to eat less meat and then replace it with processed crap.
@An Drew Bearla: Yes, all that came out of the big meeting in Davos is that we must stop eating meat and dairy or the world will starve, and we must share our cars or cycle or walk, all the mullarkey Ryan is spouting and all from a bunch that then sat down to a four course meat laden lunch after flying in on 1500 private jets. The narrative to blame the ordinary consumer and deflect away from their lavish carbon laden lifestyles is ridiculous. Animal farm springs to mind
Will do this, will improve that. All talk and no action. The government has no motivation to implement any of these policies. Still using diesel commuter trains ffs.
@Tomo: We are making progress faster than ever before. I would live to speed it up too, but denial of what’s happening is nor helpful.
Bottom line is what comes out of our chimneys and out of the vehicle tailpipes isn’t good for us and has resulted in worse health for our population and more deaths. Even if you think climate change isn’t real (it is) then only a fool would continue to not tackle us poisoning ourselves.
@Barry Somers: a few more new taxes will sort everything.
That’s the problem, the greens solution is to tax the problem with no alternative. Of course, people are turning against it
@Jim Buckley Barrett: Not true.
@Nicholas McMurry: Yes it is true. Tax tax tax from a fella that knows about as much about climate change as my 8yr old. All the solutions Eamo is pushing for at present are financially or infrastructurally unviable like hydrogen which is inhibitively expensive to make or offshore wind which we have no way due to planning restrictions and lack of infrastructure make, but which are the chief objectives of E3G which ol Eamo is/was a senior associate of, as usual the self serving bull we have gotten used to in Irish politics. Any man that signs off on tax incentives for fuel for private jets and the writing off of carbon footprint for such is not green. No viable alternatives for anything, no reduction in our carbon footprint despite all the waffle, lying about our agricultural footprint throwing our farmers and food producers under a bus because they are a soft target while letting big corporations off the hook by giving them all our carbon credits from our grasslands, hedgegrows and forestry. Ireland is not one of the worst polluters as we are so often told to justify taxing the life out of us we just fall foul of the carbon credit rules that the large industrial countries set up to make themselves look far better than they really are, America, Germany France etc
@Nicholas McMurry: of course its true, if the government and greens in particular wanted to actually do something that wasn’t a punitive tax measure, it would be a shock.
Insulation is the most effective measure, yet they persist in making the retrofitting policy, part of the convoluted seai scheme which requires “trained” certified installers, when homeowners could, depending on their current skills learn to install it just as effectively themselves, by watching a few instructional videos, just like the “trained” installers did…
Subsidising insulation for domestic projects with a zero vat rate, would encourage more people to retrofit insulation to their homes themselves, reducing the amount of heating from all sources, along with particulate and carbon emissions across the board.
Better put the old age pension up. Where will all the food come from? More homes will be needed.
Anyone find those TRVs (main image) a complete waste of time?
I find that after a year the da*n thing is stuck on full heat. (I’ve checked the pin underneath and it seems to move freely) Was this just another way for the plumbers to make a few bucks :) ?
So, if we live in England or Wales and insulate our homes we could live for 836,000 years. I don’t want to live that long.
Why does an article in an Irish publication write about a foreign country without stipulating that it is a study done in that foreign country?
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