In what is expected to become a yearly event, MDL Marinas held the successful inaugural Green Tech Boat Show in June at Queen Anne’s Battery Marina, Plymouth that encompassed a selection of electric powered craft and exhibitors making up the fast developing supply chain now moving the eco market along at speed.
The sole cruising catamaran, lent by her owners for the show, was the recently launched Broadblue ECO 346.
Tim Mayer, MDL’s sales and marketing director said: “We are delighted at how the show went at the weekend, our vision was to bring together the marine community’s innovators who are working towards a greener future for boating. We provided a dedicated platform for the marine industry to demonstrate how it’s contributing to combating climate change and highlighting products that sustainably meet the needs of the boating public.”
Mark Jarvis, production director of Broadblue Catamarans talks about the success of the ECO 346 at the show: “As this was a rather specialist event, the 500 visitors that came were focused on the technology and future in electric propulsion. It was fortunate that we were able to have a current ECO model available to showcase and had quite an interest from two potential customers and we are hopeful of confirmed orders. We first produced a similar catamaran back in 2009, the ECO 345 (10.2m), which was a milestone for us and employed the Fischer Panda drive system and the best battery and charging solution of the time. The new ECO 346 also employs the Fischer Panda system with Victron supplying the battery and charging package.
“We can deliver the 346 with diesel engines but we are committed to being at the forefront with hybrid solutions across our whole range, from the class leader 346 to the 385 and Rapier400. Our largest model, the groundbreaking Rapier 550 was designed specifically for taking hybrid power options and we are already looking at a series of larger performance catamarans in this range.
“Next for us is the all-new Broadblue 405 which has been designed to be an ECO model. We think this will be a very successful catamaran with two pre-production orders already.”
The GTBS organisers had mentioned the potential ECO retrofit market in their show overview and Mark commented on this: “We have not actively promoted retrofitting hybrid systems as yet, but we are very well placed to do this as part of a refit perhaps. The Broadblue location at Thornham Marina has all the services on site with covered buildings and several specialist marine engineering suppliers very capable of supporting us.”
