The technology Team New Zealand are using to stay lighter, faster on the water

Emirates Team NZ during America's Cup 2017 in Bermuda. Photo / Richard Gladwell

Paint company Resene is helping Team New Zealand move faster through the waters off Bermuda with a high-tech paint. Its vanquished opponents have also used the paint.

The company has been working with Team New Zealand on its America's Cup campaigns for more than 30 years, developing new formulas and paint technology.

Emirates Team New Zealand's catamaran is coated with Durepox Xtreme and Durepox paint, lighter in weight than standard paint, but Resene general manager of automotive and light industrial, Richard Muirhead, is keeping the formula under wraps.

"We export this product all around the world because it is so special. Our intellectual property in that is all about the chemistry. It is a derivative of epoxy - a two-part coating - which has a [hardener] and a binder, which mixed together has a chemical reaction to cure the coating."

Teams from Sweden, Japan and Great Britain are also using it.

Muirhead said the paint technology meant fewer coats were needed than previously.

"One of the key things about the developments we have been involved in is getting it down to the minimum paint to still achieve the attractive nature of the coating. The whole focus has been on minimising the weight in the coating to achieve the requirements of; protecting the carbon fibre, and secondly, ensuring that we have a low-friction coating," he said.

The new paint could withstand the pressures and temperatures that foils in particular were exposed to.

Prior to the America's Cup, Muirhead said Team New Zealand requested a harder and more durable coating, one that was still easy to apply.

"One of the big things for us as a developer and manufacturer of these coatings is that multiple teams have chosen to use our coating. It shows there is nothing better in the world or else they would use it," Muirhead said.

"So much of this sailing technology has come out of New Zealand and so many of our boat builders now work with other teams and they've basically taken this coating they saw Team New Zealand using because it is so good."

Durepox Xtreme and Durepox is Resene Automotive & Light Industrial's fastest-growing market segment and is exported worldwide including to Australia, Italy, England and the US.