Compass Marketing in Barcelona have acquired the Spanish marketing rights for the French designed and built Hulltimo Remote Controlled Robot Hull Cleaner, and will be opening ‘Service Points’ in Spain as well as the Balearics in the upcoming months.
World first remote control hull cleaning robot
The robot cleaner is the brainchild and long term development project of Eric Tardy and Sebastian Fontaine who own 65% of the Hulltimo business, with the rest being backed by equity participation and French government manufacturing subsidies, after the product was recognised with awards for its innovative and environmentally friendly characteristics.
Following completion of an intensive one week training and familiarisation course at Hulltimo’s factory in Grenoble at the end of February, the Compass Marketing team returned to Barcelona with a brand new Hulltimo package, ready for demonstrating to a number of enthusiastic potential clients, including several marinas and yacht maintenance contractors.
With them was Peter Franklin of Sea-Things LLP, who have an operations office in Palma de Mallorca, and will be the official contact for Compass Marketing in the Balearic Islands.
Peter commented; “After spending weekends during my youth scrubbing off bottoms of racing yachts between tides, I was immediately intrigued when Diana Corominas from Compass told me that you could now do it faster and more efficiently standing comfortably on deck with the boat still on its mooring, and a remote control unit in your hands.”
“The Hulltimo definitely does what it says on the tin”, Peter said “We cleaned a couple of 9 metre sailing yachts from stem to stern, and water line to the bottom of the keel in about an hour for each boat whilst we were training with the robot. One of them had not been cleaned for 9 months and had several millimetres of growth which came off leaving a totally clean hull.”
Fitted with 4 high powered lights and 2 waterproof cameras, the cleaner constantly feeds real time images back to a screen on the remote control module giving the operator complete command of the cleaning process.
The robot weighs just 23 kilos, and is driven remotely at speeds of up to 6 metres per minute, clinging to the hull whilst its rotating brushes get the job done. This means that the larger the yacht, the more efficiently the robot can work, as the difficult to reach areas represent a larger percentage of the total surface area on a smaller boat.
For this reason Compass and Hultimo foresee a healthy potential market for use of the robot on superyachts, especially those engaged in so many superyacht sailing regattas these days. The initial expenditure can be amortised relatively quickly in fuel savings, better performance through the water for racing, and savings on diver costs etc during a typical few seasons.
The entire Hulltimo package including operator training and a two year maintenance and spares contract can be purchased outright, or leased over 3 or 4 years from Compass Marketing in Barcelona.
