Three Australian companies amongst METS Dame award nominees

by Rob Kothe on 27 Oct 2014 From 18 - 20 November 2014 some 20,500 international marine industry professionals will convene in Amsterdam RAI. During three days, some 1320 exhibitors will show their latest products.

Innovation has been a crucial theme at METS since this leading B2B marine equipment trade show opened its doors in 1988. Surveys of the many thousands of visitors from around the world consistently show that innovation is the number one reason to come to Amsterdam each year for METS.

By tradition, METS highlights the innovative character of the industry via its renowned DAME (Design Award METS) award. The winners of this prestigious prize receive enormous publicity throughout the global leisure marine industry and the DAME award stimulates the industry to invest in research and development.

'Innovation propels the marine equipment sector forward and METS has long been the platform of choice when it comes to showcasing new (design) developments,' says Amsterdam RAI's maritime domain manager Irene Dros. 'In addition to the DAME awards, with its extra focus on design, METS always showcases thousands of innovations and new products.

The organisers of METS have revealed that 45 products have been nominated to go forward for final judging by the jury of the prestigious Design Award METS (DAME) 2014 competition. The products have been selected from a total of 116 entries from 23 nationalities all over the world.

The 45 nominations represent companies from 16 different countries and three of these are Australian.

Glide Free Design from NSW, Barz Optics from Queensland and SOS Marine from WA.

Ian Ward and Peter Stephinson's Glide Free Foiling Kit is a major breakthrough in foiling dinghy design. Their first product is a retrofitting kit for the world’s bestselling dinghy, the Laser, of which more than 200,000 have been produced.

The foiling kit enables the Laser to be launched in shallow water with foils retracted and it has fully integrated sensor wand, no special attachments or cables and trquires no modification to the dinghy itself. It allows the Laser to foil in 10-12 knots of wind, with the little dinghy reaching speeds of up to 20 knots.

A tweak on already good product design come from Kevin Barr's Barz Optics Pty. Ltd. Their Cabo Sunglass, is a modern wrap style, frameless on the bottom. The Cabo model has a density of 0.83 GM/ML so it floats in the roughest fresh and salt water. The Barz dual moulded Cabo frame is available with lens options of PC Non Polarized, Polycarbonate Polarised and Polycarbonate Polarised Bifocal.

Last month West Australia's SOS Marine Pty. Ltd last month released the newly patented sMRT SOS Dan Buoy a compact, self-contained device, specifically designed to make rescue and recovery of a Man Overboard incident a simple and reliable operation. There is no need to set or activate the sMRT SOS Dan Buoy – it’s ready to go, just throw it into the water towards the person over board.

The Overall Winner and Category Winners will be announced at the ICOMIA-METS Breakfast Briefing held in the Forum of Amsterdam RAI before the official opening of METS on Tuesday 18 November at 8:00 a.m.