This presents a good opportunity to speak with both at the same time. Philippe, you managed CDK for almost 30 years, Dominique the Carboman group for 13 years, what were the major stages or projects of your respective companies during these years?
My partners did not necessarily all agree with taking this risk, which is why we created two separate companies, Keroman Technologies and CDK Technologies. In fact, Keroman grew very quickly to become as big as CDK, this choice allowed us to build and assemble large boats, this is the step that really made the yard grow. And as well there was the adventure with the Volvo 65, working within a consortium set up with Decision, Persico Marine and King Marine.
These projects are a good illustration of our diversification strategy. And to do this of course we needed ovens to heat everything, then large autoclaves. Now we have three today. We gained this technology by buying Plastinov, who had a perfect ability in large-scale infusions because they made wind turbine blades. We have added new strings to our bow by giving ourselves complete areas of technologies that make it possible to make a difference, because not everyone needs pre-impregnated carbon, diversification also sees to that.
I would also mention the ovens capable of baking at degrees, which allowed us to access the aeronautics and space markets. Today, the company is really so different from ten years ago. What technological developments do you see coming in competitive sailing?
Today, we can already see that there are much less breakages than when we started out in this. And I think that the technologies will evolve because we see astronomical prices, we will have to find good ideas, there is really a way to progress in this area, but the imagination of man has no limits. You only have to look at the number of engineers integrated into the yards today: they did not exist before, whereas now today, on an Imoca project, we have one or two engineers attached to the project permanently.
