Mermaid Marine are bringing something new to the UK market with a range of engines manufactured in China by Yuchai Diesel.
‘Yuchai Marine diesels are a product line from the Guangxi Yuchai Machinery Co., Ltd. which manufactures in the region of 500,000 diesel engines each year for use in automotive, marine industrial and power generation markets making them one the largest engine manufacturers in the world. So these aren’t an unknown engine – but they are relatively unknown in Europe,’ Mermaid’s Stephen Atkins said.
‘So now we are introducing these to the UK and Irish markets, bringing in a range that is all heavy-duty, low RPM engines starting with a four-cylinder naturally aspirated engine and all the way up to 2170hp engines.’
The engines come to Mermaid via YC Diesel in Germany who are the exclusive European importer of the product range.
‘These are good engines that we have been testing for the last six to nine months and Yuchai Diesel are very much on top of the emissions regulations, so these engines meet all the legislation,’ he said.
Although the formal launch of the Yuchai Diesel engines to the UK market took place at the recent Seawork exhibition, tests have been taking place for a while and Mermaid have already supplied a couple of engines to customers in the fishing industry.
One has been fitted to a Torbay fishing vessel, with the owner opting for a naturally-aspirated YC6108 CA1 engine, developing 63kW at 1500rpm, and a second has been shipped to a boat builder in Scotland to be fitted to a new fishing boat. This time the choice went to a turbocharged YC6A170C engine, developing 125kW at 1500rpm.
