Umoe Mandal designs and builds high-speed craft and advanced components in composite materials since 1988.

Production & facilities

Our facilities are purpose-built and equipped for optimized production flow of larger military vessels and civilian passenger and crew transfer vessels, as well as, composite components, or production of smaller boats in larger series in combination with other large and advanced products.

Our bespoke facilities accommodate design, production, testing and servicing of large structures and vessels in Fiber Reinforced Plastic (FRP) sandwich material, and is equipped to ensure high volume, quality manufacturing process.

We evaluate the processing needs of the materials at the initial stage of every project, and customize the best solution as part of a lifecycle analysis, depending upon the intended function of the component or structure.

WAVECRAFT vessel under production

Purpose-built facilities

  • Total area: 41.000 m2
  • Indoor floor area: 16.000 mincluding offices, production hall, outfit hall, workshops and warehouse
  • Efficient sandwich composite prefabrication of large panels
  • Indoor hall can concurrently accommodate 4 ships with approximate dimensions of 60m x 16,5 m
  • Max. capacity ship lift and transport system: 400 t
  • Traverse cranes
    • 4 x 15 MT SWL in production hall
    • 1 x 12,5 MT SWL in the outfit hall
  • Systems for ventilation, heating and humidity designed specifically for FRP production
  • Deep-water quay: 6 m depth

Advanced production methods

We utilize a number of tools and techniques when designing, manufacturing and testing composite structures and vessels. We apply a number of calculation methods:

  • Computational Fluid Dynamics for aerodynamic performance predictions and load calculations
  • FEM analysis (ANSYS) for load calculations
  • Polyworx for flow simulation and complex vacuum infusion processes
  • Scaled model testing

We have solid expertise in a number of manufacturing processes:

  • Resin Transfer Molding (RTM)
  • Vacuum Assisted Resin Transfer Molding (VARTM)
  • Hand layup – Open Molding Process
  • Filament winding
  • “Pre-preg” and “Wet-preg”

Typically, all large components are vacuum infused, while high-temperature RTM is used for smaller, aerodynamic components.

CNC cutting table

Specialized equipment to support production process

  • Distributed vacuum system
  • Distributed pressurized air system
  • Automatic temperature and humidity control system
  • Large tables for vacuum infusion with carriages for fabric rolls
  • Transportable heat-curing oven
  • Crane and vacuum system for lifting and turning large panels
  • Laser projection system for laying up laminates and panels
  • CNC controlled cutting machine for large panels
  • Portable 3D laser scanner for 3D measurements of physical objects
  • Laser for downlight reinforces and contour
  • Fiber cutter
  • Easily customizable aluminum bed for building of sections and modules