Leading sparmakers Southern Spars and Nordic Mast to merge

by Southern Spars and Sail-World on 21 Jul 2010
The Directors and Shareholders of Nordic Mast and Southern Spars have announced the merger of Nordic Mast and Southern Spars.

The move gives Southern Spars a significant presence in Europe.

The merger will create a combined entity with over 350 staff that will be better equipped to compete on the world stage, supplying a comprehensive range of high quality carbon fibre masts, booms and carbon rigging to meet the demands of all market sectors. Taking effect from 19 July 2010, the merger is a timely combination of two highly regarded mast companies that have operated in different geographic and market sectors.

David Glen, Group General Manager, comments 'At Southern Spars we have been looking for some time to both increase our presence and commitment to the European market, and expand our product offering in carbon masts and carbon rigging. Southern Spars is a market leader with innovative mast and carbon rigging concepts for the grand prix race, ocean racing, and performance superyacht markets. We now will have the opportunity to collaborate with the team at Nordic Mast who have considerable experience and presence in the European smaller race boat, performance cruiser, and production cruiser markets.'

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. '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 and of benefit to all customers of yachts from the foiling Moth and Olympic classes through to production cruising yachts, race boats, grand prix race boats and superyachts' says Mr Glen.

Nordic Mast also has extensive experience in manufacturing quality carbon masts for comparatively smaller race boats, performance cruisers, and cruising yachts in Europe. The existing Nordic Mast premises and all staff will be retained, and the operation will continue to be managed by Lars Netterstrøm, who will also assume a wider Group role.

Nordic Mast’s Lars Netterstrøm comments 'We are proud to have the opportunity to join with Southern Spars and to expand our business, ultimately bringing even better carbon masts and booms to our clients in Europe. The expansion into carbon rigging products will also be new for Nordic. It is very exciting for our team at Nordic Mast to become part of a truly global sparmaking and rigging group, and benefit from all the design and technological resources available within Southern Spars.'

Southern Spars is based in Auckland, New Zealand and employs in excess of 300 people. The company 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 strategically located in Palma, USA, New Zealand and South Africa. A carbon rigging and small boat mast production facility is now also operational in Sri Lanka.

Nordic Mast was founded in 1979 and is based in 6230 Rødekro, Denmark. It employs 30 people and has concentrated on building carbon masts for race boats, performance cruisers and cruising boats up to 100’.