Southern Spars, the world leader in high-performance composite rigs and sailing systems, has installed an advanced five-axis CNC machining centre at its Auckland facility. The investment expands production capacity, enhances precision engineering, and reinforces the company’s longstanding commitment to technical leadership and innovation in the superyacht and grand prix sectors.
The new CNC system streamlines workflows and enables faster, more accurate machining of masts, booms, spreaders and subassemblies. Customers benefit from shorter lead times, consistently high-quality components, and greater flexibility for bespoke or technically demanding projects. Operations such as trimming, drilling and marking have been reduced from weeks to days, unlocking new capabilities including parallel manufacture, rapid product development and in-house mould making.
To machine components up to 50 metres long, Southern Spars has developed a custom mast feeding system that moves spars through the seven-metre CNC envelope in controlled sections. Combined with the company’s Dassault 3D digital design platform and advanced thin-ply automated tape-laying technology, the investment delivers industry-leading levels of precision and repeatability, enabling complex projects to be fully designed, tooled and manufactured in-house.
“Reinforcing our position as the global leader in composite rig manufacturing depends on continual investment that stays ahead of market demand,” said Vincent Guiot, Group Sales Director. “It also expands our ability to deliver high-quality components across a growing range of advanced composite applications, well beyond the marine sector.”
