History
Since its foundation in 1952, Supramar has provided a worldwide consultancy service, covering not only its hydrofoil vessels but also other aspects of fast marine transport.
The company has been under contract to many governements and military services.
Supramar developed, on a commercial basis, the hydrofoil system incroduced by the Schertel-Sachsenberg Hydrofoil syndicate and its licensee, the Gebrüder
Sachsenberg Shipyard. The development started in the 1930s and led to the realisation of a number of military hydrofoils of up to 80 tons displacement and 41 kt in speed.
The inherently stable, rigid surface-piercing V-foil system, which is typical for the Supramar type craft was developed by the late Baron Hanns von Schertel.
In May 1953 the world‘s first passenger hydrofoil service started on Lake Maggiore in Italy, with a Supramar Type PT 10 craft Freccia d‘Oro. She was later transferred to Lake Lucerne. A larger craft, the PT 20, was built by Lürssen Shipyard in 1953 and named Bremen Pioneer.
Since then many Supramar-type hydrofoils have been built under licence from Supramar, mainly by Rodriquez, Hitachi and Westermoen. Many Supramar PT 20 and PT 50 hydrofoil vessels are still in service.
Supramar Ltd is also engaged in new designs of high-speed craft such as fast monohulls and catamarans as well as general engineering services.
Due to the trend to higher speeds, Supramar has concentrated its recent investigations on the development of new profiles and research on solutions to eliminate cavitation/supercavitation at very high speeds above 100 kts.
In December 1997 Supramar started collaboration with the SEABUS-HYDAER Consortium, a group of 13 specialised European companies. Funding was received from the European Commission in Brussels under Brite Euram. Supramar‘s task was the development and layout of the hydrofoils for this hydrofoil-assisted wing in ground effect fast ferry with a total displacement of 500 tonnes, 800 passengers and 100 cars, and a range of 850 km with a speed of 120 kts.
The work of Supramar within this Brite Euram project was backed by a grant of OFES (office fédéral de l'èducation et de la science), which financed the tests in the high speed cavitation tunnel of LMH (laboratoire des machines hydrauliques) at the EPFL (école polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne) in Lausanne Switzerland.
Based on this successful new development and related patents, Supramars activities today cover the field of high speed hydraulic applications in general, such as superfast hydrofoils for speeds well above 60 kts, or propeller blades having tip speeds which normally would cause cavitation or supercavitation, just to give a few relevant examples.