It all started with sailing, on board a regatta yacht to be precise. Jan Reiners, born in 1961, loves offshore racing, sailed in the North Sea Week in the early to mid-1980s, sat on three-quarter tonners and on a Sprinta Sport. In 1985, during a very windy Admiral's Cup, there was a lot of pressure on the aluminium rudder. It was jammed, the rudder stock was bent and you had to steer with two people. Reiners was upset because the ship was not making any headway. "I'll build a new rudder blade," he announced without further ado, "made of carbon fibre!"
How a rare material is used
A material that few people were familiar with at the time and was difficult to obtain. His friend Torsten Conradi was writing his thesis on the design of the IOR regatta yacht "Esta", and Reiners offered him the rudder blade made entirely of carbon fibre. Fortunately, he got in touch with Professor Ahlborn, who was experimenting with carbon fibre for Airbus' vertical stabilisers at the time. He offered to collect any leftover material that he no longer needed. Otherwise they would be disposed of.
Jan Reiners got involved and also organised everything else that was still missing for processing carbon. "Friends of my parents had an old milking machine," he says, "so I got a vacuum pump." He prepared his parents' sauna to provide the necessary temperature - "they weren't at home at the time". He heated up the sauna, put the carbon part in a bag, pulled out the air and let it bake for three hours.
With success: the rudder worked splendidly. Later, he concentrated on carbon fibre spars, thicker in the middle than at the ends. However, no longer in the much too small sauna, but in a 40-foot container complete with winding machine. "I built around 1,000 of them from the Airbus material," reports Reiners. He drove the first ones to customers on the roof of his estate car, once even transporting a twelve-metre spi-tree to Palma for a Jongert.
All multiplex projects come together in the large hall
Jan Reiners laughs as he recounts these anecdotes while leafing through photo albums. He sits in a corner office in a 2,700 square metre factory building in Bremen-Nord. He moved in here 27 years ago. The site once belonged to the Vulkan shipyard, and Lürssen opened a branch office just a stone's throw away. Just last year, shortly before the company's anniversary, Reiners carried out a major renovation and had a solar system installed.
Around 100 orders are processed simultaneously in production. 25 people are involved, including seven design engineers. The Multiplex catalogue comprises exclusively handmade products: Gangways, stairs, side gangways, bathing ladders, fender systems, handrails - and awnings. The latter currently make up half of his orders. "We supply parts for the outdoor area on the ships that are only needed when the owner is on board. For hotel mode, so to speak," says Reiners. "Thanks to carbon fibre, they weigh less than 25 kilograms." Not that a few kilos more or less are important on board a superyacht. But: "In case of doubt, the crew must be able to put the awnings up and take them down again quickly," says Reiners. Every gram less helps.
The vast majority of its products go abroad
We only manufacture to order. There are virtually no stock items. Half of the yachts he equips are either undergoing a refit or are newly built. He delivers 96 per cent of his products abroad, mainly to Italy. However, formats built by Lürssen or A&R are also fitted with multiplex awnings or gangways. "80 per cent of superyachts over 100 metres in length have products from us on board," says Reiners proudly. Customers now also include the fleet of the Ritz-Carlton Group and the luxury cruise yacht "Orient Express Corinthian".
All products are designed here in Bremen-Vegesack, the carbon fibre fabrics are cut to size and the whole thing is assembled later. Reiners has side parts for ladders and gangways manufactured in a total of three workshops in the Allgäu and Schleswig-Holstein. He recently bought one of them, Vinco. They are painted in Poland.
Hardly enough money for a tank of petrol
Jan Reiners had not originally planned to equip superyachts. On the contrary. He grew up in Bremen-Nord with the descendants of the shipyard industry. He also comes from a family of boat builders and was supposed to take over his parents' small shipyard in Lesum. His grandfather had already launched boats there. However, a takeover did not materialise for family reasons, and so the Reiners scion started his own company in 1990. He initially rented space on the Lürssen premises with his friend and colleague Geerd Breffka in 1992, but after just ten months he moved to the premises of what was then Aircraft Services Lemwerder, a maintenance company for civilian commercial aircraft.
"Financially, times were difficult," reports the entrepreneur, "I now had two children and couldn't even afford to fill the petrol tank for the car." He kept asking himself what he could build from carbon fibre. Scaffolding? No, too fragile! Arms for mobile cranes? He was 30 years too early for that, "the market wasn't ready yet, the material was too unknown," says Reiners. Even Formula 1 cars were still made of aluminium; people didn't trust carbon to last long. "Let's build a gangway," he and Breffka finally decided. A shipyard in Norderney had three ships of around 18 metres under construction and ordered one for each.
The first gangways
The product was good, but it was not economically viable for two families, so the two partners parted amicably. Inspired by the Norderney order, Reiners called Nautor Swan and boldly announced: "You need gangways made of carbon fibre!" The yacht builder from the far north promptly ordered two folding gangways, one with lighting. For 5,000 Deutschmarks. This is how the Multiflap was created in 1992, at that time still fitted with railing supports from fishing accessories. In principle, the product still looks like this today. The basic version is available in different sizes and colours or with a teak covering, depending on the customer's wishes.
In 1993, Jan Reiners stood at the boot in Düsseldorf for the first time, took care of product development, marketing and production and hired a colleague. He continued to develop the gangways, produced one a week and painted them himself. Every now and then Multiplex "lost its way", for example by building an oversized banana for a children's programme. In an accident, Reiners sawed off the tip of his finger and had to go to hospital. Geerd Breffka helped him there again. The two of them got to work, drawing furiously and covering the walls of the hospital room. In the end, Rheinmetall ordered 20 housings for driving simulators.
3,500 square metres of awnings every year
In 1998, the Vulkan shipyard went bankrupt and Reiners walked around the site with his now five-year-old son. "The hall would be good here," he realised and became one of the first tenants on the site in 1999. He then received his first major order from the shipyard industry: TV boxes for Lürssen's Fast Ferries. At the beginning of the 2000s, the owners of the "Carinthia" wanted light and mobile bathing ladders: the birth of the Multiladder.
And then the owner of the yacht "Skat" wanted removable awnings. "That's when things really took off in yacht building," says Reiners. Multiplex now supplies 3,500 square metres of awnings per year. After the shade providers, the side gangways came onto the scene. He supplied the first Multistair for "Ashanti" in 2000, followed by fender systems for "EOS". His products were ordered for more and more ships from Lürssen or from the Netherlands. Nevertheless, he took the time for a completely different project: he really wanted to be at the Expo in Hanover. To this end, he produced 80 mobile, egg-shaped housings equipped with projectors that travelled through a huge hall and interacted with each other. "The ancestors of AI," says Reiners.
Multiplex processes six tonnes of carbon per year
He also built boats, a total of three models for Judel/Vrolijk between 50 and 72 feet in length as well as a tender for "Carinthia". He also built equipment carriers and masts for Lürssen yachts. The market picked up, and at some point it became too much. In 2007, Reiners had 40 people and no structure, "I was here non-stop". Work for Rheinmetall and Lürssen was stopped, and from 2010 the focus was to be solely on the company's own products, their marketing and customer support. In 2019, Multiplex went one step further and relocated production to other sites. Reiners wanted to have even more time for the products, customers and new projects - and thus increase quality.
And now, on his 40th birthday, something big is happening: two new employees are joining the company and are entrusted with a lot of responsibility, including an operations manager. "It's supposed to work without me here," says Reiners, limping out of the office after tearing a cruciate ligament while kiting. He wants to focus more on strategy and development in future.
On a tour of the hall, he points to the order picking boxes for the orders. Each one contains small parts such as fittings or rollers that will later be needed for assembly. For the "Orient Express", one of the labels reads, 100 awnings have been ordered, covering a total of 800 square metres. Next to the cutting machine, Reiners reveals the amount of carbon he processes each year: six tonnes. He also recycles old awning supports, for example. These can be recycled. The boss then pulls out a large bag and unpacks a foldable, six-kilo carbon table: "When I'm travelling with friends and my Land Rover, we need it." The original model broke, and Reiners said, as he did with the broken rudder, he would simply build a new one." This also led to further orders. One owner ordered a complete beach arrangement for his yacht, including a table, chairs and tents.
A new experience for the Sheikh of Qatar
Finally, Reiners unlocks a wooden door - and leads us into another world. It is a kind of wood-panelled garage with backlit ceiling panelling and bird motifs. In the centre of it all, "Anna" sits enthroned on a trailer. Built in 1928 by his great-grandfather from wood, the seven-metre-long motorboat has a place of honour. It is lovingly cared for, by the boss himself, of course. "A coronavirus project," he says.
The family boat has also played a role in the business. When the Sheikh of Qatar had the bridge of his Dhow 101 fitted with carbon fibre from Multiplex, he came to visit the Bremen construction site in 2021. What could you offer such a man that he didn't already know? A trip on "Anna", of course. On board, he was thrilled, pointed to the steering wheel and said: "I want one like that for my yacht too." He got one. Exposed carbon fibre included, of course.
Uske Berndt
Editor News & Panorama
