Saint-Gobain Vetrotex, a French supplier of composites to the boatbuilding market, has announced that a prototype of the new 4.6m (15ft) Twincat from 2win performed well during recent sea trials, and is due to be marketed early next year. Twincat is said to be the first sports catamaran for the leisure market that is constructed from TWINTEX — a thermoplastic composite developed by St-Gobain that is extremely light and offers strong impact resistance to ageing.

"TWINTEX is a unique thermoplastic range of reinforcement based on commingled unidirectional thermoplastic and glass fibres," says Saint-Gobain. "By intimately blending glass and thermoplastic filaments within the reinforcement, TWINTEX has solved the problem of impregnating continuous glass fibres with thermoplastic resins at low cost."

The new Twincat catamaran is the result of a technical partnership between designers Fritsch & Associates of Yvelines, France; 2win of Charente Maritime, France; Plastic Processing Alternatives of Galway, Ireland; and Saint-Gobain Vetrotex of Savoie, France. The first boats will appear at the 45th Salon Nautique International de Paris, which runs from December 2-12 at the Porte de Versailles in Paris.


(21 October 2005)