Southern Spars to merge with Danish competitor

Southern Spars riggers Blair Hogg and Simon Barker. Photo / Supplied.

One of the real success stories of the New Zealand marine industry over the past decade has announced a merge with a Danish competitor.

Auckland-based Southern Spars has merged with Nordic Mast, a Danish company based in Rodekro. The merger has created a combined entity that now employs over 350 staff and supplies carbon fibre masts, booms and carbon rigging around the world.

The move follows what Southern Spars' group general manager, David Glen, says was a long-held desire for the company to both increase its presence and commitment in the European market and to expand its range of carbon masts and rigging.

The merger will give the new company a broad reach, and not just geographically. Southern Spars has long been a market leader and innovator in the grand prix race, ocean racing, and performance superyacht markets. The Nordic Mast team, on the other hand, has considerable experience in the smaller race boat, performance cruiser and production cruiser markets, especially in Europe.

"Southern Spars has strong design technology and tools developed through its involvement in America's Cup, Volvo Ocean Race and other international race boat programmes," says Glen.

"Southern's design software, Rig Calc, has the added advantage of integrating into the North Sails design software to produce an optimum rig/sail package and this technology will now be available to all customers from those with foiling Moth and Olympic classes through to those with production cruising yachts, race boats, grand prix race boats and superyachts."

Southern Spars is made up of five key business units: NZ Masts, Cape Town Masts, Composite Rigging (which manufactures the innovative EC6 carbon rigging) and Rig Pro, its specialist service business with centres in Spain, USA, New Zealand and South Africa.

- NZ HERALD