Southern Spars wins major Auckland Business Award

by Sail-World.com on 2 Nov 2017 Leading international sparmaker and more recently America's Cup boatbuilder, Southern Spars Ltd has won the Supreme Business Excellence Award at the Westpac Auckland Business Awards 2017 – West.

The Avondale (Auckland) based business is the world’s largest manufacture of super yacht and racing yacht masts.

Southern Spars’ general manager, Peter Batcheler says their reputation grows from their world-leading expertise.

“Innovation is in everything we do. We take the combination of discipline and passion to help us create new products every single day, and international trade is all we do. The reality is 99.5 percent of what we do goes straight off shore.”

Southern Spars Ltd also won the Excellence in International Trade category making it eligible for the supreme award.

Despite an expected slowdown before the 35th America's Cup, Southern Spars has attracted a high level of orders with the prospect of further significant growth and is currently seeking to increase its workforce by 50 people.

Currently Southern Spars are completing an order for ten 52 Super Series spars to be installed in the highly competitive fleet based in the Mediterranean. Southern Spars also has a substantial involvement in the current Volvo Ocean Race supplying spars and other components for the one design fleet.

Several major suppliers in the America's Cup and other major sailing events are located in West Auckland including Doyle Sails (NZ and International) and composite engineering company C-Tech.