Alicat builds business

In the last few weeks, the company has launched two new divisions: Alicat Hydraulics and Alicat Stainless Steel Fabrications. These new divisions are said to be showing growth on almost a weekly basis as their reputations grow and a new client base is established.

Housed alongside the Alicat Marine Electrical workshops, these new units have significantly increased the company’s footprint, David Blake, business development manager, told Maritime Journal.

“Our Alicat Marine Electrical division has continued to expand and is doing quite a lot in the passenger ferry, luxury yacht and cruise liner markets, which is a market not necessarily associated with Alicat,” he explained.

The boatlift unit, Alicat Liftout Services, has also been busy and has proven to be one of the company’s strongest areas for performance. Since the modification of the dock, the 200 tonnes boatlift has remained consistently busy, carrying out several lifts per week for survey vessels, patrol vessels, barges, workboats and fishing vessels.

“We’re pretty excited about the amount of diversity because we have to be very careful not to put ourselves in too much of an industry specific box,” Mr Blake told MJ.

Elsewhere, with a healthy order book to fulfil for its sister company, Alicat Workboats are building South Boats IOW designs for the first time in Great Yarmouth.

“This was something that we’d not done previously but in doing so means that we can take on larger orders and deliver within much better lead-times,” Mr Blake said.

South Boat’s first in class new South Cat, Seacat Intrepid, was launched in Cowes earlier this month for Seacat Services Ltd. The new vessel measures 26.8m LOA remaining under the 24m load line requirements for small commercial vessels, has a beam of 9.2m and an operational displacement of around 80 tonnes.

Seacat Intrepid is the first of two sister vessels for Seacat Services with Seacat Courageous set to be delivered early in 2015.

By Rachael Doyle