Azimut Yachts, with a boat making factory at Avigliana, in the province of Turin, is Italy's premiere builder of yachts and megayachts, some of which total 30 meters (70 feet) in length.
Founded in 1969, Azimut Yachts was originally a boat chartering service run by a young university student, Paolo Vitelli, with a passion for sailing. In 1970, the fledgling firm was doing so well that prestigious yachting brands began to appoint Azimut as their main boat distributor in Italy, and soon after, the company began designing its own yachts.
In a joint venture with Amerglass, Azimut designed the AZ43' Bali, a mass-produced fiberglass boat, which became an immediate success. The company gradually expanded its range, focusing first on the lower end of the yachting market. Indeed, the launch of its AZ32' Targa in 1977 was described as the "Ford Model T" of the boating world.
{pagebreak}
Once its base was firmly established, however, Azimut began to make inroads into the high-end boating industry, characterized by the memorable debut of the Azimut105’ Failaka in 1982, the biggest mass-produced yacht in fiberglass at the time.
In 1985, Azimut acquired a company by the name of Benetti, a historical brand based in Viareggio that had been building boats since 1873 and had designed the concept of the megayacht. With Benetti as part of its portfolio, Azimut began building its own luxury yachts, blending a mixture of new technology with its signature style, which included design features like large frameless windows, electric seats and sumptuous walnut interiors.
In the late 90s onwards, Azimut acquired new boatyards at Fano, restructured the Benetti boatyards at Viareggio and constructed a new site at Avigliana, thought by many to be one of the more cutting edge boat making facilities in the world. The major technological push forward, however, was to be found in the firm’s use of vacuum infusion for the construction of the yacht hulls. Azimut was the first Italian firm to use the method, imported from Scandinavia.
In a partnership with a firm called DSM Composite Resins, the Azimut-Benetti group’s R&D team developed a series of resins specifically to achieve mechanical performance and water resistance which could be easily infused to allow for very thin laminates.
Vacuum infusion - the good, the bad and the ugly
{pagebreak}
The vacuum procedure was developed by Azimut’s R&D center in collaboration with a Swedish company, DIAB. The system—based on a sandwich principle of two skins with a core material in between—allows for the resin to be distributed uniformly which significantly increases the structural integrity of the hull. In regular, non-vacuum lamination, boatmakers need to rely on a manual process for stacking layer upon layer of fiberglass, mounting each one in a different orientation, and laminating between each layer.
With vacuum infusion, the boat makers stack all the fiberglass in one go, covering the stack with nylon, adding injection points and then injecting the resin while putting the whole laminate under pressure to remove all the air. The skins take up normal stresses and give the structure a hardwearing surface. The core material absorbs the shear stresses generated by loads, distributing them over a larger area.
The process also uses Divinycell and Klegecell as core materials, because both are closed cell and thus are virtually impervious to moisture. The entire process can take about eight hours for a 30 foot hull.
