It's not New Zealand's cup, but they're still our boats

Making the new America's Cup practise class in NZ 'makes us feel proud,' says boatbuilder Tim Smyth. Photo / Gilles Martin-Raget

In a grand hall in the riverside town of Warkworth where they once printed the news, men in grey T-shirts and dusty Oracle Racing caps are making news of their own.

The echoing space where the printing presses of the Rodney Times once rolled now houses the first mass-production of wing masts in the world. It's the first time an entire class of America's Cup yacht has been built in the same country, in the same building.

The first five AC45s, slick little catamarans that will usher in the new era of America's Cup sailing, have been delivered to their owners - America's Cup teams paying a discounted $600,000 each for the privilege of racing the brand new one-design boats.

And it's thanks to American software magnate Larry Ellison, who listened to two Kiwi boatbuilders - Tim Smyth and Mark Turner - that this fillip for the New Zealand marine industry ended up here, at Core Builders Composites.

This cat already has many people purring. As Hans Frauenlob, of New Zealand Trade and Enterprise, puts it: "The AC45 is as close as we'll get to Formula One."

Core Builders Composites is a wholly owned subsidiary of Oracle Racing, holders of the America's Cup.

Last September the defenders decided to produce a new one-design 13.7m boat which would allow cup challengers to come to grips with multihull sailing before building their own 22m versions for the Auld Mug contest in 2013.

When the question was asked, who could build 10 of these boats and have them ready to race in the first America's Cup World Series event this July, Ellison was convinced Kiwi boatbuilders could meet the challenge.

Smyth and Turner managed the building of Oracle's triumphant monster trimaran in Washington State for the last cup, and were behind Oracle Racing buying the 5300sq m Warkworth site three years ago. Under America's Cup rules, the trimaran could only be built in the US, so Warkworth sat idle until six months ago.

Now Core Builders Composites has employed around 50 staff - many of them locals, others returning Kiwi boatbuilders who have plied their trade offshore for decades.

"The Kiwi journeyman boatbuilder is the most widely travelled New Zealander in the world," says Smyth, who left as a professional sailor in 1981, intermittently returning home to Matakana. He's been with Oracle Racing since 2000.

Having to turn the boats around in a short time, Smyth knew it was too big a project to take on alone. He also knew the New Zealand boatbuilding industry could help do the job proficiently, which led to the business heading south.

"We knew we had to come somewhere where Mark and I could manage the project. If you went to any other country, it would be more expensive," he says.

"Once we got down here we talked to people like Cookson Boats and Hall Spars. We emphasised that this was a New Zealand product, and we should be pretty honest with each other - that it was bigger than all of us.

"We explained how it would bring kudos to the New Zealand industry, but could also be an ongoing class production. It was an easy sell."

Cooksons, which has traditionally built Emirates Team New Zealand's yachts, has helped build the flying hulls of the cat; Hall Spars creates the main beams. Other Auckland companies, C-Tech Carbon Technology and Craig Stirling Composites Engineering, are involved, and even local businesses like Warkworth Sheetmetals have profited from the contract.

"Critically, we have shared processing knowledge between us, which typically doesn't happen in the America's Cup," Smyth says.

"This was totally unanticipated. It gives us great pleasure to do this here; it makes us feel proud and good."

In Warkworth, they make the radical wingsails from carbon fibre, Kevlar and Nomex, and the composite components for the hulls.

Throughout the building are remnants from Oracle Racing campaigns past: a mezzanine floor from Valencia, a monstrous Wisconsin oven for curing composites and New Zealand's largest five-axis milling machine, for machining complex components from composite materials.

"The most exciting thing that's happening here is the digitalisation of boat building. We're making our own tools, and milling things efficiently and accurately," Smyth says.

But the establishment of Core Builders Composites won't just be about boats. Frauenlob, NZTE's director of specialised manufacturing, says he sees benefits beyond marine.

"They are experts in fabricated composite materials. We can see their skills being turned to the aerospace industry."