Second Queen's Award for Halyard

Halyard Marine Ltd has announced that it has been awarded The Queen’s Award for Enterprise. This is the second time that Halyard has been presented with the prestigious award in four years – in 2006 for Innovation, and today for Continuous Innovation.

As experts in the field of marine silencing systems, the award reflects Halyard’s continuous innovation with the design and development of new products, since first winning the award in 2006. Managing Director, James Grazebrook, explains that the company has made demanding commitments to new products: “We wanted to expand into new, but related technology to broaden our offering in current markets, while continuing to grow in newer markets such as commercial, defence and superyacht.”

Since 2006, Halyard has demonstrated its dedication to innovation by developing a number of significant new products to provide strategic solutions for the silencing of larger marine engines and generators. New products include a range of exhaust water separators - creating the world’s lowest cost product covering generators with exhausts from 40mm to 75mm, and the company’s patented watercooled Helmholtz resonator silencer in conjunction with the Institute of Sound and Vibration Research (ISVR) at the University of Southampton. The new resonator system reduces the cost of the silencer, whilst allowing Halyard to tune the units to attenuate noise at specific target frequencies. In addition, Halyard took its first steps into exhaust gas cleaning, using Puregen - a system designed to incinerate soot in generator exhausts.

The new product development has enabled the company to keep pace with the market and expand its capabilities into both the international superyacht and commercial boat sectors. In just five years Halyard has doubled the engine size range it can deal with, from an average of 800hp to a maximum of 4000hp.

Halyard’s success has been met with an increasing demand for its product range to be used on yachts produced by prestigious boat builders such as Discovery, Fairline, Oyster, Princess and Sunseeker, as well as many others throughout Europe. In particular, Halyard has recently installed its innovative Resonator Silencer onto Fairline’s award winning Squadron 65 motor boat, significantly reducing exhaust noise whilst meeting strict cost targets, and helping to achieve Fairline’s ongoing targets for exceptionally quiet noise levels.

Resonator technology is not new, but Halyard is the first company to apply the principle to water-injected marine silencers. The bespoke silencers incorporate a reactive resonator which is tuned to filter out specific problem noise frequencies from a band centered around the engine’s firing frequency, significantly reducing the overall engine noise emitted. Using the Resonator Silencer can reduce engine noise to such a level that it becomes quieter than the sound of the boat passing through the water (RCD 25m drive-by test).

Derek Carter, Chief Executive at Fairline commented: “Fairline’s commitment to building world-class yachts uses a key selection of specialist British manufacturers. Over the past 20 years, Halyard’s continuous innovation has enabled Fairline to offer ever quieter boats to our demanding customer base. The result is typified by the use of Halyard’s Resonator Silencer on our newest Squadron 65, which recently won the prestigious Motor Boat and Yachting “Motor Boat of the Year Award”

James Grazebrook summed up: “The marine industry has worked incredibly hard to bring new products to market during the recession. Halyard is but one example – albeit deeply technical. Our work has allowed us to improve our product for existing customers and to access new customers, which has helped us through two difficult years. I am sure we shall see a continuing economic improvement in the marine market internationally to allow us to exploit further the commercial advantage this development work has given us. My thanks go to our staff and our partners outside the company, for the work which led to this award.”
 

James Grazebrook, MD Halyard.

Bespoke water lift silencer.

Fairline Squadron 65.