Boatbuilding craft, composite engineering and natural materials.
Friedrich J. Deimann trained as a wooden boatbuilder. He loved the craft, the material and the relationship you build with a boat while making it.
But traditional wooden boatbuilding is difficult to scale. Every one-off demands enormous effort, and when one project is finished, the next often starts almost from zero again.
After his apprenticeship, Friedrich moved into high-end composite boatbuilding, including luxury tenders for superyachts. He became fascinated by infusion, moulds and the ability to engineer a material through fibre orientation.
What he did not like were the conventional materials themselves: difficult to work with, difficult to relate to, and usually hidden beneath paint when the product was finished.
For his master craftsman’s piece, Friedrich brought those two worlds together: natural materials on one side, composite engineering on the other.
The kayak was not the beginning of the idea. It was the first product that showed the idea could work.
The first years were about learning the material: how to engineer it, how to process it and where it could replace conventional composites without compromising the product.
The GreenBENTE24 was the moment the idea moved from small prototypes to a real keelboat. At 24 feet, with a 12-metre rig and the loads of a proper sailing yacht, it showed that natural fibre composites could match the weight, stiffness and sailing performance of the conventional GRP version.
FLAX27 was our own product: a 27-foot daysailer developed with Judel/Vrolijk & Co. The goal was not to make a demonstration piece. It was simply to make a beautiful sailing boat — and let the material prove itself through the product.
FLAX27 · Detail
Working with Team Malizia and 11th Hour Racing moved the material into one of sailing’s toughest environments. Slamming loads, vibration, fatigue, salt water and thousands of ocean miles made performance measurable.
Malizia-Seaexplorer carried 49 GREENBOATS components. In the same year, GREENBOATS received the World Sailing 11th Hour Racing Sustainability Award.
From material development to ocean racing.MB9 “Keena” took the next step: a 30-foot sailing yacht built predominantly from natural fibre composites. At this scale, we are already in the heart of the pleasure-boat market. The question was no longer whether the material could build a real boat, but how far the approach could go.
By this point, natural fibre composites were no longer a compromise we had to explain. They could deliver the structure, weight and product quality we wanted.
People like the products. Performance and aesthetics are no longer the main barrier. Cost is.
Natural fibre composites need tighter control of pressure and temperature than conventional boatbuilding. That is pushing us towards panel-based construction: producing controlled structural panels first, then designing boats around a more repeatable manufacturing system.
If better materials remain expensive, simply adding margin to a higher sticker price will not make boating more accessible. We want to design the product and the business model together.
The long-term goal is to move beyond optimising how many boats we sell. We want to maximise how much the product is actually used and minimise its operating cost over its life — including what happens to the composite at end of life.
Behind the boats is continuous R&D into fibres, resins, sandwich structures, manufacturing processes, durability and circular design. The product story is also a research story.
Our work has received the World Sailing Sustainability Award, Bremer Umweltpreis, Biocomposites Award and Ocean Tribute Award.
Our detailed material research and cross-industry development activities continue through Circular Structures.
Explore R&D →If material cost is the problem, the answer cannot be another conventionally built one-off boat. R.U.D.I. is our move towards a repeatable panel-based construction system.
Controlled pressure and temperature move into panel production. The boat itself becomes a configurable product built from a common structural platform.
We want to make products we would use ourselves — and find better ways to build them. Marine gives us the place to test those ideas properly.
Cross-industry material development, research and manufacturing work sits within Circular Structures.
Materials, R&D and industrial applications.
Explore R&D →