Doyle catches export winds

Chris McMaster says the company plans to make 80 per cent of its fabric in future - up from 30 per cent. Picture / Greg Bowker

New-generation sailcloth is keeping Doyle Sails so well upwind of its competition that it has shelved plans to move its manufacturing overseas.

With exports accounting for about two-thirds of the Auckland company's revenue, the impact of the higher dollar in the past few years forced it to consider closing its manufacturing loft.

But now that the benefits of the $1 million it spent developing the Stratis sailcloth are starting to flow through, Doyle has the confidence to anchor the business here and to forecast a 25 per cent increase in turnover this year.

Stratis sailcloth is custom-made to the boat.

Conventional sailmaking involves cutting and placing many separate panels of sailcloth, which can only approximate the load paths or stress of a sail.

With Stratis cloth, each high-tech fibre is individually laid by a mapping process, distributing the load more accurately. The fibres are then laminated.

Doyle set up a fabric manufacturing plant in Mt Wellington six months ago to house the new technology, which is now used for 80 per cent of production.

Having the entire sailmaking process, from design through to delivery, in-house has saved hundreds of thousands of dollars in freight and fabric costs.

This also means Doyle can be more responsive to customers and provide a faster turnaround.

Managing director Chris McMaster said the company planned to make 80 per cent of its fabric in the future - up from 30 per cent.

Doyle is expecting a 25 per cent rise in turnover this year through sales of Stratis to other manufacturers and by widening its client base.

"Basically, anyone with a performance boat can benefit from using one of our sails," McMaster said.

"The technology we've developed is brand new to New Zealand, so we are establishing a new area of expertise in this sector."

McMaster formed Doyle Sails New Zealand in 1999 when his company, Boyd & McMaster Sailmakers, merged with Doyle Bouzaid Sails, owned and run by sailors Richard Bouzaid and Phillip Houghton.

It is a franchise of the Doyle Sailmaking Group, founded by America's Cup veteran Robbie Doyle in 1982. The group has 40 lofts in 20 countries.

The Westhaven company specialises in making high-performance cruising sails for large yachts through to America's Cup boats. About 40 per cent of its business is locally based.

Superyachts provide up to 40 per cent of the work, with sails costing from $200,000 to $600,000.

The America's Cup loss in 2003 dented fortunes for the maritime industry and McMaster knew Doyle had to be on its game to stay competitive.

The company identified that reliance on third parties for its raw material, and dollar pressure, were making it unsustainable to stay local.

So the Stratis project began three years ago, with the help of a $225,000 grant from the Foundation for Research, Science and Technology.

McMaster said if that step had not been taken, some of its 38 staff would have been laid off.

Patents on fibre-aligned sailcloths will expire in Britain and the United States in June, which leaves Doyle to focus on the Australasian market and refine the process until then.

In recent years the company's three shareholders, McMaster, Bouzaid and Houghton, have seen no dividends or profit because of the high costs of the investment.

Doyle will continue to reinvest up to 10 per cent of revenue in research and development, which McMaster said was critical to staying competitive in an industry that had gone from being driven by craftsmanship to technology.

"Much of the competition in sailcloth manufacture are large global corporates that have big investments to protect and develop.

"A lot of new resources will be going into those," he said.

Doyle's next goal is to speed up lamination techniques and make sails that are even lighter, without compromising strength.

For now, it is sustainable to stay here despite high freight costs, compliance costs and growing competition from China.

"But longer term," McMaster said, "if the dollar stays where it is, we will be forced to set up manufacturing plant offshore."