November 13, 2014
Kingston fire boat builder gets Rio deal

We are honoured to have been featured in the local paper.

By Ian MacAlpine, Kingston Whig-Standard
Wednesday, November 12, 2014

It may not have been the nicest day to take a spin on a boat on Lake Ontario Wednesday. With high winds and waves white-capping on the lake, a journey wasn't for the faint of heart.

But on a MetalCraft Marine Firestorm 50 fire boat, the trip was merely to show the company's Brazilian customer what the boat can do on rough water.

The performance of the 15-metre boat and the reputation of the Kingston outfit was enough for the Rio de Janeiro fire department to commit recently to the purchase.

And there could be more MetalCraft boats going to the South American country, if a high-ranking official in the Rio fire department has his way.

Col. Amadeu Fonseca, commander of the Search and Rescue Unit Marine Division of the Sea, was in Kingston to meet further with MetalCraft officials and take a boat ride on Lake Ontario.

Also visiting Kingston was Brazilian-Canadian Marcus Almeida, who helped broker the deal, and Julio Wuleszny, who handles maintenance of Rio's fire department fleet.

They met with MetalCraft officials, including contracts manager Bob Clark, in the boat while docked at the Flora MacDonald Confederation Basin. The Brazilian contingent also met mayor-elect Bryan Paterson, who was pleased a local company had such far-reaching customers.

Adorning the top of the boat were Canadian and Brazilian flags.

"We know MetalCraft for its quality and, in my opinion, (it) is the best shipyard that constructs fire boats in the world," said Fonseca, handling himself well in an English interview with the Whig-Standard.

He added that the economy in Brazil has grown, and with some trade restrictions lifted in the country, it made the purchase easier. Fonseca said he would rather buy from MetalCraft than from businesses in his own country.

"Sometimes it's not the equipment we like," he said. "Now we don't have any more restrictions. We are now free to choose the best equipment they have in the world.

"Now we have the freedom to make the right choice, to chose the best we could find."

With the boat due to be delivered later this year, it will be available in plenty of time for the 2016 Summer Olympics.

"We are preparing to give more safety for the people," Fonseca said. "So we're buying the right thing."

The Rio Fire department has some other boats, bought about five years ago, but they are not quite as large or sophisticated as the Firestorm model, and Fonseca wants to eventually have a full fleet of the Kingston-made boats.

"My idea is to replace them year by year. I don't know how many boats, but we're planning on making this change."

According to MetalCraft's website, the Firestorm 50 is a high-speed, aluminum fireboat that can provide more speed, manoeuvrability and pumping capacity than any other speed fire boat currently on the market.

Fonseca likes its versatility.

"This is a multi-mission boat you can use for everything: search and rescue, combat fires, and transport victims that need medical attention."

The Firestorm 50 is currently in use in Alexandria, Va., Camden, N.J., and Miami-Dade, Fla., among other coastal cities.

The boat is due to be trucked to Houston later this week and then placed on a special delivery ship. The boat is expected to be in Rio by Dec. 24.

Fonseca said his department has to deal with about 160 km of shoreline and be able to travel another 65 km out to sea.

Marcelo Andrade, of Lucalex Holdings, a company from Toronto that helps Canadian and Brazilian businesses connect, was the go-between for Rio de Janiero officials and MetalCraft Marine.

He said difficulty with paperwork, documentation requirements and Brazilian regulations stalled the project slightly.

"Things got lost in translation, not only language-wise but also in terms of business culture in the countries (being) a little different," Andrade said. "I step in to bridge the gaps that exist between the business cultures in the two countries."

Clark said on Wednesday that South America is a captive market for them.

"This is the first (boat) I believe of many," he said. "There's not a builder in all of Brazil that can build anything like this and no designs close to it."

He said the company started looking into Brazil as a potential market about four years ago.

Once MetalCraft was comfortable with the rules, regulations and logistics of the market, it hired an agent to find willing customers. And there could be a lot of them down there.

Clark said that when he went to Brazil on business recently, he met other officials from different Brazilian fire departments who wanted to know about the MetalCraft product.

Unlike in Canada, fire departments are run by the individual states in their country and many have coastlines on the Atlantic Ocean.

"Every one of them were interested with the boats."

This isn't MetalCraft's first foray into markets other than in Canada or the United States. It is also building fire boats for Kuwait and Australia, and has delivered a variety of boats to Venezuela, Oman, Tunisia and Zambia.

"The fire boat market has been strong for us, but it's mainly because we brought new technology to the market," Clark said.

Clark said the fireboats could possibly get to fires in the Rio area involving buildings built along the coast much quicker than a fire truck could.

"To go five miles could take two hours in traffic," he said of the city with a population of between 11 and 13.5 million in the metropolitan area. "So you can imagine the problem of a fire truck in such congestion."

A lot of Rio features narrow roads with no shoulders.

"How can they even get through?"

Even though temperatures in Fonseca's home town are much warmer than in the Limestone City -- averaging about 30 C annually, compared to about 7 C in Kingston -- he's enjoyed his four visits here over the past year while making the deal.

"Kingston is a very good city for tourists."

ian.macalpine@sunmedia.ca


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