Lofrans

What Lofrans is, and who owns it now

Lofrans was established in Monza in 1966 and has spent close to sixty years on one narrow job: anchor windlasses and the deck hardware around them. The company moved into a new, larger facility at Via Leonardo Da Vinci in Cambiago, north of Milan, in 2026, the year it marked its 60th anniversary, describing the new site as privately owned and state of the art. Lofrans states its product line now runs to more than 25 models across boats from 6 to 50 metres, roughly 20 to 160 feet, and that its windlasses carry approval from three classification societies: RINA, Bureau Veritas and DNV.

Since 2012 the company has traded as Lofrans under Lalizas Italia s.r.l. Unipersonale, a subsidiary of the Greek marine equipment group Lalizas, which bought Lofrans the same year alongside the bow thruster maker Max Power and the fender and accessories brand Nuova Rade. That means a Lofrans windlass now sits inside a much larger corporate parts and distribution network than the standalone Italian company that built its reputation, with Lofrans stating a worldwide network of more than 40 official distributors. The company's own history also records a 2013 investment round that put in an SAP enterprise resource planning system, a new warehouse management system and a B2B ordering platform, infrastructure aimed squarely at a dealer buying spares or a new unit rather than a private owner, which is the channel most Lofrans windlasses actually sell through.

The engineering claims: Automatic Free Fall and the Control Box

Automatic Free Fall lets an anchor drop under its own weight rather than under motor power, which is the mode most sailors actually want in a hurry: paying the anchor straight down rather than winding it out at motor speed. The Control Box is Lofrans' electronic management layer for the windlass motor, and the company markets a plug-and-play design intended to cut the wiring and configuration work an installer has to do compared with an older-style windlass wired directly to a deck switch and a circuit breaker.

None of these three claims, Automatic Free Fall, the Control Box or plug-and-play wiring, were independently verified against a named rival's equivalent system in this research; they are reported here as Lofrans' own description of its engineering, sourced to the company's own technical information pages rather than a third party test. What can be checked independently is why the claim matters in practice: a windlass installation that used to need an installer to run separate circuits for up, down, free fall and chain counting now runs through one control box and one harness, which is the kind of change that shows up as fewer wiring faults over a boat's life rather than as a headline number on a spec sheet.

A named, independent bench test found Lofrans' own bigger, pricier windlass barely outperforming its smaller, cheaper sibling, and both running slower than the company's own published speed claims.

The range: vertical, horizontal and capstan, with real numbers on two models

The Tigres, a horizontal windlass aimed at boats from 36 to 49 feet, runs a 1500 W motor on 12V or 24V and takes 1/4 inch, 5/16 inch or 3/8 inch chain depending on the gypsy fitted. Two figures for its maximum pull capacity appear across Lofrans' own retail listings, 2,300 lb by one account and 1,700 lb by another, a discrepancy this research could not resolve from the company's own site, so both are reported here rather than one being picked as correct. Current US pricing for the 5/16 inch, 12V version was USD 3,312.45 at Fisheries Supply and USD 2,972.99 at West Marine in 2026, two independent retailers landing within about ten percent of each other, while SVB, a European retailer, listed the Tigres from EUR 1,344.50 for a lower-specification base configuration.

The Cayman is the compact horizontal alternative, aimed at 20 to 45 foot boats with a 1000 W motor and up to 1,400 lb of pull. Above the horizontal line sit the vertical windlasses, including the X1, X2 and X3 families and the Marlin, and the wrapping capstans, which Lofrans states cover boats from 6 to 45 metres. Both horizontal and vertical designs share the independent gypsy and drum operation, manual chain release and manual override features that Lofrans lists across the range. The practical sizing question for a buyer is not the windlass alone but the gypsy fitted to it, since a gypsy is cut for one specific chain size and type, and a Tigres ordered with a 5/16 inch high-tensile gypsy will not correctly feed 5/16 inch BBB chain of a different link shape, a mismatch that shows up as slipping or jamming rather than as an obvious fault at the point of sale. Getting a length of the boat's actual anchor chain to a dealer before ordering, rather than quoting the chain size from memory, is the cheapest way to avoid that mistake.

What an independent bench test actually found

On the Dorado, a horizontal windlass that carries its motor belowdecks for the smallest on-deck footprint of any horizontal model Practical Sailor tested, Nicholson measured a no-load speed of 62 feet per minute against Lofrans' own claimed 79 fpm, with a working-load speed of 48 fpm against a claimed 46 fpm, a maximum pull of 550 lb on rope and 1,000 lb on chain, at a tested price of USD 730. The reviewers singled out the Dorado's metal chain and rope guide, which Lofrans calls a pressure finger, for praise, expecting it to outlast the plastic guides used on some rival windlasses before needing replacement. Practical Sailor's test rig applies a measured load rather than relying on a windlass's own current draw as a proxy for pull, which is why its figures can differ from a manufacturer's bench numbers even when both are measured honestly.

On the Project range, the more expensive Project 1500 measured a no-load speed of 89 fpm and a working-load speed of 66 fpm at USD 2,160, against the smaller Project 1000's 96 fpm no-load and 72 fpm working-load at USD 1,320, a full 840 dollars less. Nicholson's own conclusion was direct: "though the 1500 uses a larger motor and higher gear ratio than the 1000, we did not find significant performance increases." In the same comparative test, Practical Sailor found the Maxwell Freedom 800 faster on no-load retrieval speed and the Lewmar V3 stronger on chain pull than either Lofrans model, which is a genuine, named, third-party finding rather than a rival's marketing claim.

The vertical and manual lines, for a smaller boat or a simpler installation

The X series, running X1 through X4 plus a heavier Ercole Vertical model, is built in mirror-polished marine bronze rather than the anodized aluminium of the Tigres and Cayman, and is aimed at sail and motor boats from 6 to 27 metres. The X2 and X3 are also offered in a Plus version machined from AISI 316L stainless steel for owners who want the strongest available corrosion resistance, and every model in the X series carries a watertight stainless steel ball bearing built into the base, which Lofrans markets as a zero-maintenance feature and states is unusual in the wider windlass market, where a base bearing is normally a routine service item.

At the simple end of the range sits the Royal, a fully manual horizontal windlass with an anodized aluminium body weighing about 10 kg, worked entirely by hand through independent gypsy and drum operation with a manual chain release and override, and no motor, wiring or electrical draw of any kind. For an owner of a smaller boat, or one who wants a mechanically simple backup windlass with nothing to fail electrically, the Royal is the option that removes the motor, gearbox and control box entirely from the reliability question that Practical Sailor's bench test raises for the electric models, at the cost of every pull of the anchor taking real physical effort rather than the press of a switch.

Who it is for: An owner sizing a windlass for a 20 to 160 foot boat who wants classification-society approval and a large parts and distributor network behind the purchase, and who should check independent bench figures rather than the model's own claimed speed before choosing between two Lofrans models a step apart in price.