SILK ISSUE • n° 34 • 2023
Just add Water
by Paola Bertelli - ph. Courtesy by HP
Sea0Spot (above) is the first unit on the market to combine the functions of desalinator, softener and nano-filter in a single unit. To side, Raymarine’s new Axiom 2 multifunction display with the HP Watermakers icon on the Home screen Courtesy by Raymarine
Flexible, far-sighted and always welcoming innovations, HP Watermakers designs, builds and distributes on-board water treatment systems. Its new developments are always game changers. The latest is Sea0spot, a combination desalinator and softener
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The HP Watermakers story is that of a small but extremely smart company whose ideas have revolutionised the desalinator market. The first automatic machines launched twenty years ago have been followed by a series of patents and innovations, and nowadays the company has a broad overall water management vision, offering solutions ranging from desalination to the glass of water on our tables.
Extension work has recently been finished on the company’s main facility in Zibido San Giacomo, a few kilometres from Milan, doubling its area. The sales and assistance network is also enjoying constant growth – in 2022 HP Watermakers opened a flagship warehouse and shop in Fort Lauderdale, with shops already operating in Dubai, the Maldives and South Africa. HP Watermakers has always seen innovation as a top priority. “We’ve always been closely linked to technological innovation. For us, quality and innovation are fundamental elements in our work, we constantly try to look at least ten years ahead. For a small, flexible concern like ours you work like that or you get nowhere at all”, says Gianni Zucco, co-founder of HP Watermakers. The latest product, launched in nearly 2023, is Sea0spot, a first for the market – a single unit that functions as desalinator, softener and nano-filtration unit. “Because of the problems linked to managing water systems” says
Gianni Zucco, “More and more frequently the water from columns no longer has the same quality as mains water and can even be semi-saltwater. That’s why we decided to develop a smart, effective solution to the problem of poor quality water on the quayside and incorporate several functions into one unit”. Sea0Spot is a development of the HP Kilo, an innovative 220V desalinator launched in late 2022. Consuming only 1 kWh it can provide constant production of 120 litres of fresh water per hour. This compact, low-consumption unit is designed for medium-small yachts.
A further source of pride for Gianni Zucco is the partnership with Raymarine, a partnership that’s now resulted in the recently-launched Axiom 2 PRO, the most powerful Axiom plotter ever developed by Raymarine. It incorporates a chartplotter, fishfinder, radar, autopilot and video in a powerful multifunctional display. A series of third-party apps interact with the system. “The choice of applications that HP Watermakers is part of”, says Michelle Hildyard, VP of Product Management and Business Development Raymarine, “was subject to a careful analysis to select the most useful, the ones that would make the greatest contribution to enhancing on-board life. That’s why we included the desalinators, and the choice fell on HP Watermakers, which was also the first company to develop a communications protocol compatible with our systems”. https://hpwatermaker.it
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HP Watermakers, founded by the Zucco family in 1995 (Gianni Zucco, above, and his father Luciano, above, right), has made a significant contribution to changing the world of desalinators, first making them automatic then enabling them to interface with the on-board electronics. Besides the yacht and commercial shipbuilding sectors the company also operates in the residential and military fields.