Page 95: of Maritime Reporter Magazine (November 2015)

development and manufacture of OP- minum could be an optimal solution for

SHIPP Modules (Series Hull Integrated both pleasure and work craft, and his

Precision Platform) using sea-grade long history of working with aluminum 8mm aluminum. Today in Duisburg you in the dispenser business aided the initial will ? nd one of the most modern small effort.

boat builders in the world, complete with high-end manufacturing capabilities and Building the Business a heavy investment in computer aided The Ophardt operation is customer technologies, CNC machines as well as facing and offers what it believes will welding, gluing, screwing and pressing be a concept readily accepted by many operations. small and medium sized boat builders,

Hermann Ophardt is an engineer inside as Hermann and Thomas see the Ophardt and out, and he ? rmly believes that for family of aluminum hull chassis as the every problem there is an engineered missing piece for many companies that solution. When he made the decision to need good, consistent quality, whether open a maritime operation in Germany, the boat series is for two vessels or 200, most people dismissed the idea, noting allowing these smaller companies to en- that the much of the maritime business joy unprecedented ef? ciencies and qual- had moved long ago from Germany to ity of hull, able to bid and compete for the Far East. larger value, higher volume jobs.

But Hermann Ophardt thought dif- According to Thomas Ophardt, the ferently, envisioning an opportunity to company sees itself as an enabler for meld his accrued engineering acumen small to medium boat builders globally, with state-of-the-art manufacturing tech- able to supply an ef? ciently manufac- nology and technique. “I said I think tured hull chassis, sent for moderniza-

Preparing for a test drive on the riv- there is a chance, you simply have to ? nd tion based on boatbuilder capability er Rhine aboard Ophardt’s largest a niche in the market.” and client demand. “There are so many

So he set out to found a company that small shipyards that make two, three, model, 39.6 x 12.5 ft. with 900 hp. was different from the GRP small boat four small boats, but they don’t enjoy construction model, believing that alu- the bene? ts of mass production of small www.marinelink.com 95

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