Will DK Yachts take over the world?

Andy Nicholson looks at the Malaysian mega-builder

You’ve just placed the order for your new million dollar custom race boat and when you pick it up it has a ‘Built in Malaysia’ sticker on it. Can this be the future of race boat building?

Situated in Malacca, a place better known for its pirates than its boatbuilders, DK Yachts are rapidly becoming one of the powerhouses of production, semi-custom, and custom race boat construction and not just in the Asia region.



An aircraft hanger, next to Malacca Airport doesn’t sound like the sort of place that race boats should be built until you start piecing all the bits together. The main shed covers 110,000 square feet and is air-conditioned; there a 40m autoclave, huge freezers for pre-preg storage, an engineering workshop and restaurant for the 200 plus employees plus a wind tunnel and 120m long tank test facility.

The company’s rapid rise since 1997 is a remarkable one, because it actually all came about because of a German architect wanting to construct lightweight domes for a number of mosques that were being built and refurbished in Asia. A composite dome has many benefits over one built using conventional materials - its light weight means that the supporting structure can be simplified and being constructed out of a number of separate panels means it can be quickly and easily assembled on site.



It was Hannes Waimer’s German company Speedwave, which won the first contract to build the domes. Since the 1980s Speedwave has been well known in racing circles for building hi-tech custom parts for race yachts, a speciality being their carbon fibre/titanium rudders. They also built the ILC40 Anemos for the German Aerosail programme.

To fulfil an order for domes coming up in Malaysia, the first seeds of Dian Kreatif (DK) were sown in 1997, when Waimer set up the factory in Malacca with a local electronics entrepreneur.

With Waimer's background in race boats combined with the obvious advantages of building in the Far East, it was an easy choice for their facility to also move into yacht construction. First yacht out of the company was a Reichel-Pugh designed 42 footer, which led to Farr International's Geoff Stagg to start putting orders for Mumm 30s and Farr 40s DK’s way.

To date 12 Farr 40s, 14 Mumm 30s, two Farr 52s and the first Farr 36 have come out of DK's factory. If you walk there today, there’s a new DK46 under construction, a Farr 520, the tooling for the new Farr 36 (soon to be shipped off to Carroll Marine), a hull and deck for another Farr 36, a Mumm 30 while a Farr 40 is in for a respray.



That’s in one corner of the shed - in the other is the latest creation by Juan Kouyoumdjian, Frank Pong’s wicked looking 115ft record breaker, complete with rotating wing mast, canting (and lifting..) keel, and water ballasted ‘wings’.

DK's success is not simply a case of low labour rates. True, there is a large low cost, local workforce, but they are supplemented by small team of highly skilled and experienced boat builders and technicians, who have been brought in by Speedwave.

The jewel in the crown of their building equipment is a 5-axis cutter, top of any boatbuilder's wish list. All the 3D modelling is done on site, this is then used to make all the required moulds, using the 5-axis cutter. Accurately produced moulds means easy assembly of parts, which is overseen by a project manager and his small army of low cost labour.



The axis cutter does everything from hull, deck, bulkheads and internal modules. You start with a frame, which is then sprayed with foam; this raw block is then trimmed down, slightly undersize, by the computer controlled cutter. A new layer of higher density foam is then sprayed on and then the final cut takes place. This is then either laminated to make a male mould or is used as tooling to create a female mould.

This has been a successful part of the business, with DK producing the tooling for the Grand Banks Eastbay series, the Dubai-based Victory powerboat team, the new Farr 36, a 50ft catamaran motorboat, and numerous other manufacturers - not to mention numerous mosque domes.

The entire build process can be handled ‘in house’: DK are able to build composite spars and wheels, carry out all the stainless steel fabrication, manufacture the keel fins and rudders and spray everything the colour the owner wants it.

If there was a downside of the operation it would be DK’s location. You can’t pop out in the van and pick up your paint from Awlgrip, or get that missing Lewmar part. This means that the organisation and the role of the project managers is key to the process.



And all of this is achieved at a price significantly cheaper than that of traditional European or US semi custom boat builders. It will be interesting to see how the new Mills designed DK46 sells and just how many more boats will soon be occupying some of the 110,000 square feet of space.

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