AB Inflatables

What is AB Inflatables and who owns it?

AB Inflatables is a privately held rigid inflatable boat and jet tender builder trading as a division of AB Marine Group, a family business controlled by the Heyer family since a German immigrant named Ulrich Heyer started building riveted aluminum runabouts under a Starcraft license in Venezuela. AB's own company history dates the start of the business to 1969, while a 2009 trade press account in Trade Only Today puts the formal founding of the Lanchas Venezolanos yard at 1972, a three year gap that neither side has reconciled in public material. What is not in dispute is the succession: Ulrich's son Ivor Heyer took over as factory manager in 1985, brought in an Italian inflatable tube builder called Artigiana Battelli as a partner, and in 1996 merged the two businesses into AB Marine Group, the name that still owns the AB Inflatables trademark today.

There is no public shareholder register and no indication of outside investment; every account of the company, from AB's own site to independent trade coverage, describes it as still run day to day by Ivor Heyer. That matters to a buyer because it means warranty and parts continuity rests on one family business rather than a listed group, the same structural position as UK custom builder Compass Tenders and unlike Zodiac Nautic, which sits inside the larger Zodiac Marine group, or Highfield, a 2011 startup with French and Chinese ownership. AB is the oldest of the five brands compared here by a wide margin and leans on that longevity in its marketing, but the founding date discrepancy is a reminder to verify any single historical claim on the AB site against an outside source before repeating it.

Where are AB Inflatables tenders actually built?

The working assumption for this entry was a Miami or Italy base, and that does not hold up under research: AB Inflatables has never manufactured in Italy, and Miami is a sales and boat show presence, not a factory. The real production history runs Venezuela to Colombia. Ulrich Heyer built the original aluminum boat business in Venezuela starting in 1969 or 1972 depending on the source, and the Italian connection is limited to the 1985 partnership with tube builder Artigiana Battelli, whose expertise AB absorbed rather than a factory AB still operates in Italy. When Chavez era currency controls, inflation running past 30 percent and nationalization threats made Venezuela unworkable, Ivor Heyer moved the entire operation to a 100,000 square foot plant inside the Barranquilla free trade zone, 200 yards from the city's commercial port. The move cost more than 1 million dollars, took nine months and included a four month production shutdown, according to the trade press account of the relocation.

Being inside a free trade zone next to a working port lets AB import hardware, resin, aluminum stock and engines from the US and Europe without paying duty, a real cost advantage over yards based in the US or western Europe and part of why AB can price below Novurania and Williams at comparable size. The plant now runs about 300 employees with stated capacity for up to 400 boats a month, and AB says it added a new purpose built structure on the same Colombia site in 2022 to expand that capacity further. Every hull, tube assembly and inboard or jet installation happens in house, which AB and its dealers both point to for quality consistency, and the company issues each boat a traceable build history documenting materials and build date. For a buyer, the practical takeaway is that hull identification numbers on AB boats read Colombia, not Florida or Italy, and any dealer or listing describing an Italian or Miami built AB is describing the sales office, not the yard.

AB builds the one tender catalog where hull material and propulsion are a genuine choice, not a brand identity, and the forums say to interrogate the aluminum hull bond closely before you buy one.

What models does AB Inflatables make and what do they cost?

The fiberglass Nautilus line covers eight models from 11 to 19 feet; the 2026 Nautilus 19 DLX runs 19 feet overall on an 8 foot 4 inch beam at a 1,639 lb dry weight. Dealer listings put Nautilus asking prices between about 16,000 and 63,000 dollars, averaging around 36,700 dollars, though those are brokerage and new boat asking prices pulled from Boat Trader and YachtWorld rather than a published AB list price; AB does not put MSRP on its own site for any model, so a buyer has to go to a dealer for a real number. The larger fiberglass Oceanus line runs bigger and pricier: the Oceanus 21 VST is 21 feet 4 inches long on an 8 foot 10 inch beam at 1,808 lb dry and rated for 18 people, asking 55,000 to 119,000 dollars across current listings, and the Oceanus 24 VST steps up to 24 feet, a 9 foot 3 inch beam, 2,213 lb dry and a 20 person rating, with no public asking price found in this research.

On the aluminum side, the Alumina series answers the growing demand for lighter, dent resistant hulls: the Alumina 12 ALX weighs just 337 lb on a 12 foot hull with a 0.125 inch (3.18mm) aluminum skin, the 13 ALX weighs 452 lb, the 14 ALX 408 lb and the 15 ALX 604 lb, all well under half the weight of a comparable fiberglass Nautilus. AB's jet range tops out with the ABJet 450 Diesel, 14 feet 8 inches long, 6 feet 8 inches beam, 1,841 lb dry, running a 110 hp turbocharged Yanmar diesel through an Italian Castoldi jet pump with a 19 gallon fuel tank, and dealer asking prices for it were found at both 138,443 dollars in the US and 799,999 Danish kroner (roughly 115,000 dollars) in Denmark, a gap that reflects options and local market pricing rather than one fixed factory price. AB backs the tube fabric with a 10 year limited warranty, full coverage for the first 5 years against porosity failure and a declining discount schedule from 50 percent down to nothing over the following five years, plus a separate 5 year seam warranty on the taped internal seams.

How does AB Inflatables compare to Williams, Novurania, Zodiac and Highfield?

Williams Jet Tenders, founded in Oxfordshire, England in 2004 and still the dedicated jet tender specialist of the group, builds nothing with an outboard, which means no lower unit sticking out of the transom and an easier fit in a shallow garage; a Williams Sport Jet tender weighs about 1,800 lb, in the same band as AB's 1,841 lb ABJet 450 Diesel. AB's own dealer material claims its largest jet, the ABJet 465 XP, beats the comparable Williams 460 SportJet on both passenger capacity, 8 versus fewer, and price, though AB is the interested party in that comparison and no independent spec sheet was found to check it against. Novurania, based in Vero Beach, Florida since the 1990s after starting as an Italian yard in the 1960s, competes only in fiberglass, hand builds every hull to order, and its range runs from 6,800 to more than 258,000 dollars, overlapping AB's Oceanus line at the low end but reaching well past it at the top; Novurania's pitch is bespoke Florida built fit and finish, AB's is standardized in house production at Colombian labor costs.

Zodiac Nautic, the recreational arm of the French Zodiac Marine group, covers a similar PVC and Hypalon tube range to AB's fiberglass boats but spans a much wider price band, from 1,450 to nearly 440,000 dollars across the whole Zodiac line, reflecting a mass market presence AB does not have; AB stays in a narrower, more consistently premium band. Highfield, the youngest brand here, founded only in 2011 and built in a 26,000 square meter Chinese facility, is the aluminum specialist AB's own Alumina line competes with most directly: Highfield claims its aluminum hulls run 10 to 20 percent lighter than an equivalent fiberglass boat and pushes hard on a 30 year structural lifespan claim for marine grade 5083 aluminum, and a comparably sized Highfield aluminum tender undercuts AB's Alumina line on price by most dealer accounts, though without AB's 50 plus year design history or in house jet propulsion range. For a yacht owner choosing a garage fit tender, the honest summary is that AB does not force a tradeoff between hull material and jet propulsion the way its rivals do; Williams only does jets, Highfield barely does jets, Novurania is fiberglass only, and only AB and Zodiac offer a genuine aluminum or fiberglass, inboard or jet choice within one manufacturer.

What do AB Inflatables owners actually say?

On Trawler Forum's long running thread about the best inflatable tender, the consensus among posters comparing AB against Achilles and Highfield was that AB is top of the line and extremely well built, though quite a bit more expensive than the other two; the same thread notes AB's deeper bow area handles rough water better than shallower bow rivals, and flags that AB leaves its aluminum bare rather than painted or anodized, which some owners consider a cosmetic and corrosion resistance drawback out of the box. On The Hull Truth, one poster who owned a Hypalon AB for 15 years reported selling it still in good working order to a new owner, a data point for tube longevity on the fiberglass hulled, Hypalon tubed side of the range specifically. A Boat Specialists dealer write up, while obviously not neutral, corroborates the quality control angle owners describe, pointing to AB's practice of issuing a traceable build history document per boat recording materials and build date.

The aluminum RIB line draws sharper criticism. A SailNet Community discussion from July 2020 and a long RIBnet Forums thread both describe AB aluminum RIBs failing at the glue joint between the Hypalon tube and the aluminum hull, in one case a 10.5 foot aluminum AB only two years old already delaminating and taking on water; another account describes an AB 3.20VL arriving with Hypalon separating along the port bow within three weeks of delivery. Cruisers Forum carries the same complaint from a different angle, with one owner reporting weld cracks on an AB 9.5AL aluminum hull within about a month of taking delivery on a trip to the Bahamas in 2011, and a thread bluntly titled Don't Buy an AB Inflatable adding to the pattern. None of these reports come with a resolution described from AB directly, and the complaints cluster specifically on the aluminum hull, glued tube models rather than the classic fiberglass Nautilus or Oceanus RIBs, a distinction worth making to a buyer choosing between AB's two hull materials.

Who should buy an AB Inflatables tender, and what should they check first?

A yacht owner or captain shopping in the 15 to 25 foot tender bracket who wants fiberglass hull durability, a proven Hypalon tube warranty and jet or outboard propulsion in one catalog is the clearest fit for AB, especially if the boat will see the kind of harbor and coastal use the deep forward hull is designed for rather than repeated beach landings on rock or coral, where an aluminum hull from Highfield would take the abuse better. Buyers should ask their dealer directly for the current factory price list rather than relying on brokerage asking prices, since AB does not publish MSRP and the spread seen in this research, for example the Oceanus 21 VST asking anywhere from 55,000 to 119,000 dollars, reflects engine choice, electronics and console options as much as base hull price.

Anyone considering the Alumina or Lammina aluminum hulled RIBs should ask the dealer specifically about the hull to tube bonding method and get the warranty terms on that bond in writing, given the recurring forum reports of Hypalon separating from the aluminum hull within weeks or months rather than years on some units; this is not a reason to avoid AB outright, since the same forums also carry owners who kept aluminum ABs for years without incident, but it is a due diligence item this category of buyer would otherwise have to dig up themselves across three or four different forums. Buyers should also factor in that AB's warranty on tube fabric declines on a fixed schedule after year five rather than holding at full value, unlike some rivals' flat term coverage, so a tender bought used at year six or seven carries materially less fabric warranty than the same age boat's original owner had.

A chi si rivolge: AB Inflatables suits a yacht owner who wants a wide fiberglass or aluminum, jet or outboard model range from a single established builder at a price below Novurania or Williams, and who is prepared to check hull to tube bonding details closely before choosing an aluminum model.