About Dean
continued from front page...
Dean Pannett started his boatbuilding career mid 1978, working in both production and custom Auckland based boatyards.
As part of a build team for race boats "Steinlager II (IOR Farr Design Maxi built at Southern Pacific Boatyard) and "Icefire" (Mummary 45 Design built Phillip Wilsons) Deans experience as a builder began in 1988 with more "advanced composite material"
After hours in 1988-89 Dean built "Bacalou" a high speed planning launch from vacuum consolidated wood/glass veneers with PVC foam cores. This boat is still in use by family and friends today after more than 25 years of hard use.
From 1990, Dean worked on the first three International Americas Cup Class (IACC) structures in both the Hull and Spar construction areas in NZ and Spain.
Employed in 1995 by composite suppliers as a technical sales representative in Auckland, Dean moved to work in 1998 based from the Isle of Wight supporting custom race boats and super yacht builds in NZ, Spain, Italy, Finland, Sweden and the U.S.
Moving from a hands on boatbuilding career to a Technical Sales Position and progressing to Business Management position later with General Electric in 2000 from Auckland, Dean also worked as a Hull Loss Adjuster with Auckland based Lloyds Agency for around 14 months.
With long history of working with many of the worlds leading boat builders of high performance composite structures, Dean has technically supported a wide range of construction processes as a composite technical representative.
With the range of proprietary processing developing quickly from yard to yard, class to class and region to region, technical support from suppliers of advanced composites, primarily into the larger advanced race boat classes became a critical part of supply contracts and agreements.
Designer engineers specifying the use of Advanced Composite Materials for construction has grown from traditional areas of aerospace and custom marine high performance markets over the last 20-25 years where these advanced materials were really first used with confidence on large structures.
Marine structures in particular were exposed to the harshest of environments where dynamic loads were extreme, with race boats being driven even harder and faster than ever seen before through a variety of sea states for many thousands of nautical miles. Advanced Composites certainly were well proven in these environments and are still be used with confidence today by all performance related material structures
With the technical challenges becoming more complex for builders now using elevated temperatures using both "in autoclave" and "out of autoclave" pressure to process, advanced composites marine structures were also becoming larger.
Designers were specifying a wider and more specialised range of materials and process technologies to optimise design and build times . Designers with the extra scope to optomise structures with these materials were often squeezing "the window" for construction process than what had been seen.
Dean has been involved with many of the worlds leading boat yards supporting materials sales for a number of leading manufacturing suppliers into this market area ensuring the right material arrived on cue for any chosen build sequence.
Custom Marine Structures supported for material sales have included V60, V70,IMS, AC45, AC72, TP52, IMOCA, IACC, PHRF and IRC amongst other production and one design race boat classes.
With a broad process and construction experience learned over this exicting period of development in construction, Dean still enjoys working closely with our customers to assist with many of the challenges constructors face in marine, civil, automotive and industrial applications
Dean, is actively engaged in running NZ Composites Ltd day to day and is still working to support constructors of both the largest and smallest advanced composite parts with the best Composite Material Available.
Dean Pannett incorporated NZ Composites Ltd in April 2010.