Mr Boats Factory Tour
Monday 19th April 2010
Words & Pictures by Grant Harman,
Peter Allen & Stuart Perry
At very short notice, Committee Member, Grant Harman, gave us the opportunity to do a factory tour of Fi-Glass/Mr Boats Ltd. Grant is a Senior Sales Representative at Mr Boats and with his guidance we were able to see the manufacturing side of luxury boat building as well as some of the fabulous finished product.
Apologies in advance for the quality of some of the pictures - your scribe’s camera does not like certain lighting conditions (gas discharge lamps, etc) and tends to turn the photos green!
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Grant took us through the Lay-Up facility at Fi-Glass Ltd which is part of Mr Boats and is where the gel-coat is applied to the moulds before the fibre glass strands are layered with resin from a chopper gun then hand rolled to remove any airbubbles that could create a weakness in the finished product. The process usually takes 3 days to produce a deck and a hull together before they are shifted to the finishing factory
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| In the Fitting Out section of the factory, all the various moulded pieces and hardware ie. tank, bilgepump, nav lights, handles come together and most are fitted before the two halves (hull & deck) are joined to produce the finished boats. |  |
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Fi-Glass is the largest fibre-glass boat manufacturer in NZ (with Stabi-craft being the largest boat manufacturer). Fi-Glass have 5 different hull designs currently in use that produce 7 different boats. Two hulls have different decks for different applications. |
Mr Boats generally have about 30 boats Grant Harman |
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