Doyle Sails in Qingdao

by Doyle Sailmakers on 29 Aug 2007 Doyle Sailmakers proudly announces the opening of a full manufacturing loft in Qingdao, China, the site of the 2008 Olympic Games.

Australian sailmaker Mark Fullerton, who was heavily involved with development of the D4 membrane technology heads the Doyle Qingdao team in the new 24,000 square foot facility.

With an increasing number of sailors, boatbuilders, and sailing events coming to China, including two stops of the 2008-2009 Volvo Ocean Race, Doyle is positioned to ride sailing’s newest wave.

For the last two years the Doyle Sail Making group has been working quietly to expand into China. New Zealand born Mark Fullerton was 11 years with the Doyle Fraser group and was heavily involved with the development of the D4 sailing making system, now owned by Dimension Polyant.

Fullerton, along with Service Loft manager John Hearne and Steve Hewitt, the DF production manager, purchased the Doyle Australia sail loft in 2004, in a management buy out.

Fullerton commented ‘We’ve been looking at the China scene since 2004. It’s a natural step. Australia and New Zealand has a population of 25 million between them, Asia has more than two and half billion and sailing is rapidly increasing its profile.

‘We recognised that with the heavy investment from the seaport city of Qingdao ahead of the 2008 Olympic regatta, it was a logical place for Doyle to set up a major sail-making facility. ‘Our Qingdao facility is a brand new building with an area of 2,220 square meters (24,000 sq feet) out of which 1500 Sq Meters (16,100 sq feet) is solely for production.

‘High volume offshore manufacturing is not a new idea to the Sailing Making industry.

‘Around the world, the same trend is occurring. The lofts in the sailing areas are outsourcing their manufacturing to high volume lofts in China, Thailand and Sri Lanka. This allows the myriad of small lofts to get their people out on the water and they end up selling more new sails than they would have been able to otherwise.

‘We will be very competitive against the current Asian produced products but we have the advantage of being a one hundred percent Doyle Product. ‘Because the Doyle group lofts are all using SailPack design software, we can deliver sails from Qingdao to other Doyle lofts around the world.

‘The design work for our Asian loft is going to be done here in Australia, by the same team who design all our racing sails. The technology and design filters down. Using our designs and our production standards and importing the same cloths we do here, as we will do there, we pick up the advantage and produce the better workmanship.’


Doyle Sails Qingdao: +86 532 8658 6126
mark.fullerton@doyleaustralia.com


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