Experimental development of a wood veneer encapsulated GRP process for the application of racing boats

该项目的总体目标是完善一种系统，将木材贴面封装到玻璃纤维模塑中，用于赛艇应用。许多船主希望游艇具有美观的、正宗的木质饰面，这仍然适合比赛。然而，近年来，由于所使用的劳动密集型建造方法以及完成木船的耗时和昂贵的年度维护，木船的销售因其巨大的费用和缓慢的生产时间而下降。我们有商机提供一种玻璃钢(GRP)保护的木质单板船，它将具有现代玻璃钢制造工艺和传统木质饰面外观相结合的优势。购船者的优势包括一艘看起来很棒的“木制”船，它以具有竞争力的价格和较低的维护成本吸引着传统买家。这也将有助于向缺乏竞争力的水手开放市场。这个试验性开发项目成本的投资回报率在5年内达到200%，帮助我们的销售额在目前水平上增长了50%，并在商业化后的第5年维持甚至增加了我们目前80%的出口水平。

The overall objective of the project is to perfect a system for encapsulating a wood veneer into a glass fibre moulding for the application of racing boats. Many boat owners desire boats that have an aesthetically pleasing authentic wooden finish, which are still suitable for racing. However, in the recent years wooden boats sales have fallen due to their significant expense and slow production time due to the labour intensive building methods used, and time consuming and expensive annual maintenance of finishing the boats. There is a business opportunity for us to offer a Glass Reinforced Plastic (GRP) protected, infused wood veneer boat, which would have the benefits of a modern GRP manufactured process combined with the traditional look of a wooden finish. The advantages to the boat purchaser include a great looking “wooden” boat which is attractive to the traditional buyers at a competitive price with lower maintenance costs. It would also help open up the market to non-competitive sailors. The return on investment for this Experimental Development project cost is 200% over 5 years, helping grow our sales 50% above current levels and maintaining or even increasing our current level of exports from 80% by year 5 post commercialisation.