www.astilleroscatoira.com

ESTALEIROS CATOIRA

Our company, Astareiros Catoira, began to work in 1915, with the founding of a small shipyard by our grandfather, D. Xosé Ramón Collazo Tubío. This shipyard was located in the cove of the Castle, in Rianxo. This location would not change until 1989, when, due to the filling of these lands, a new ship had to be built in the port area of Rianxo, a location that remains today.

In the beginning only our grandfather took part in this company and had four local carpenters working in the shipyard, but many of the best carpenters of the surrounding area was formed in this shipyard, arriving later to become independent and to have its own company.

The type of boats that were made in this shipyard varied according to the needs of the ship-owners: it could be small boats like racús, xeiteiras boats, burriños, etc., or greater measure boats like sloops with two masts or “pailebotes”, used for the transport of goods.

A new generation begins in the late 1940s, with the incorporation of our father, D. Manuel Collazo Dieste, who had to take over the shipyard due to the death of our grandfather.

In this new stage, our father continued the activity of the shipyard, incorporating gradually little advances that were emerging in this type of activity. Thus, the arrival of the first planning machine and the electric saw in the mid-1960s became a veritable revolution in this sector.

With this instruments and helped by a staff that came to be of eighteen people, they constructed innumerable boats, being one of the first one the “Santa Elena”, constructed for the canning industry Escurís. This shipyard made many all kind of boats, inshore fishing boats, purse seiners and, with the introduction of the mussel aquaculture, a market niche emerged making auxiliary aquaculture boats, activity that has reached to nowadays.

As most representative boats of this period of time, we can highlight the purse seine fishing boat “Manilo” built for Riveira in 1970, which had 19 meters length, 5 meters sleeve and 2 meters strut.

The largest vessel built at this period was a sand dredger, “Encarna Segundo”, which was fished on the Ulla River. It was 25 meters length, 8 meters sleeve and 2.20 meters strut and it could carry up to 150 tons of sand between the two metallic hoppers it had.

The last period, which forms the third generation of the Asteleiros Catoira, is led by the brothers Ramón and Manuel Collazo Mosquera. This process began in April 1997, when the company Herederos de Manuel Collazo Dieste, C.B. was founded. Commercially, the company was known as Asteleiros Catoira.

Its activity is being developed in the after mentioned covered shipyard and in an adjacent one, bought in 1996 as an extension of the business.

Each one of these shipyards has a covered area of 20 meters width by 30 lengths, an outdoor clear area of 10 x 20 meters and two dry docks with exit to the sea.

Throughout close to a hundred years we have built many fishing boats, aquaculture auxiliaries, “gamelas”, traditional boats, etc., always in a traditional way. However, in the last 14 years we have been incorporating new techniques, both in the treatment of wood and in the sealing and gluing (paints and epoxy glues), and incorporating the combination of different materials (GRP superstructures, stainless steel or aluminium).

Another notable qualitative advance was the introduction of tropical woods such as elondo, iroco, teak, xatoba, etc. which brought with it an important saving in the maintenance of the boats.

However, we consider that the most significant advance of our company was the turkey to the delivery of boats we built. In this sense, we proceed to supply and install all the equipment of the boat such as the propulsion engine, haulers or razors, axle lines, rudders and hydraulic cranes, diesel tanks and assembly in general.

In order to carry out these tasks, we have a lathe, welding machine, sewing machine, mechanic saw, plasma cutting machine, ox fuel, table bore, pipe press, pipe bending machine, band saws, planers, crane, and others Lifting devices.