A Lightweight Composite Cabin was unveiled today in Southampton. This innovation has been funded by the UK Government’s ‘Innovate UK’ and DSTL.

A consortium of market leading companies and advisory bodies including Carnival UK, Gurit (UK) Limited, PE Composites Limited, University of Southampton, Trimline Limited and Lloyd’s Register have been involved with its designing, engineering, manufacturing and fitting out.

This highly innovative prototype is half the weight of a typical cabin and complies with the prescriptive requirements of the FTP Code, said a statement.

Tom Royle, from Wizz Consultancy was inspired to design the module and knows the number one attraction this cabin will have, he said:

“Reducing topside weight is becoming an increasing problem for naval architects as the trend for larger capacity ships continues. With this Lightweight Composite Cabin, the weight of each cabin is typically halved. This could open up opportunities for more cabins to be added to ships, without the added weight.”