Contessa goes Harken mad!

When I was researching winches, there was a clue that Harken might have a good environmental ethos. The company globally are sponsors of Plastiki - a great project which involves sailing a boat made out of 12,000 recycled plastic bottles across the Pacific ocean to highlight the problem of plastic in the world's oceans. The same drive as the powerful film "Message in the Waves". When I started talking to Lymington based Harken UK about their environmental policy they had an unusual answer which got me thinking. Managing Director, Andy Ashvie said "we don't really believe in policies here". There's something to be said for not having too many policies, it kind of kills the spirit and the energy of a place and when I probed further it turns out that Harken have quite an advanced approach to environmental management - The UK facility reduced it's energy consumption by 25% last year. Globally, teleconferencing is encouraged, there is an advanced system of waste recycling and the new factories in Italy and the US are state-of-the-art, packed with eco features. In the course of building Calypso we are discovering quite a few progressive companies like this, who don't make a big song and dance about their eco credentials - the truth is that being green is often about being efficient - something any company who wants to stay in business does naturally. The great thing for us, is that out of this drive for efficiency, Harken have come up with a revolutionary new winch system making them substantially lighter, really easy to strip down and clean/fix - and they look really cool! So, after many years, Contessa goes Harken -I think it will be the beginning of a great partnership.