Products containing Irgarol 1051 were banned from sale from 24 November, 2001, but the total ban on application from 24 November 2002 only applies to craft under 25 metres.

Larger vessels are regarded by the HSE as deep-sea craft that spend "only a short period of their working life in the inshore or coastal areas of concern".

As both boosters are still used extensively throughout the rest of the EU, coatings companies outside the UK have to produce specific formulations for sale in the UK and Denmark.

This made Mark Lord of MB Coatings more than annoyed.

MB imports the Italian Attiva range of coatings and the sudden ban left a bit of a hole in the company's business.

"The ban of diuron had a huge knock on our business, effectively putting MBM out of the market in 2002 whilst our Italian manufacturing partners, Attiva, developed and tested a new replacement product for the UK market, " he told me.

Lord says MB launched its new self-eroding antifouling, Professional UK, this month. It retails at £34.99 for a 2.5 litre can and is available in black, blue and red.

The diuron ban looks set to remain in place, according to Caroline Morris, European antifouling product manager at Akzo Nobel, parent company of International Coatings.

"We believe diuron will not be supported under the BPD and it will be prohibited, " she told me.

However, she confessed Akzo Nobel is not sure about irgarol. While Beyer - manufacturer of diuron - said it will not support diuron under the BPD, Ciba - which manufactures irgarol - has not said what it will do with irgarol.

"I am assuming they will support irgarol because it is widely used across Europe, " said Morris.

So it's likely there will be another round of reformulation in the near future. Either that, or the companies will find substitutes for both chemicals.

"We changed two or three years ago, " said Morris. "We use Preventol A4S instead of irgarol and Preventol A6 instead of diuron."

According to Morris, the chances of Preventol making it onto Annex 1 are good: "Preventol shows very good degradation and will survive under the BPD, " she confidently predicts.

Plastimo told me they reformulated and launched new products in October 2001.

"The public and the trade reported good performance, " said Carole Bourlon, group product manager for antifoulings and boat care.

"They hardly noticed the difference between the old and the new formulations."

She added that Plastimo uses the same three boosters the rest of the trade use: "The difference comes from the "magic touch" of the chemist and the manufacturing process, " she added.

In the UK market, XM Yachting - now part of the Plastimo organisation - remains at the value for money end of the market. "We have three products, all available in three litre packs, " said managing director Magnus Andersson. "We can give three litres of our UK-made brand for the price of 2.5 litres of Plastimo product."

According to Knott, by improved polishing patterns and rates of the antifouling matrices, Blakes was able to remove the banned active substances and optimise the level of approved substances in the products.

But while the HSE-banned boosters caused short-term problems, it seems the total disruption of the industry may be avoided if Europe takes its lead from a court case appeal in Holland against its ban on copper in antifouling.

Dutch environmentalists had successfully claimed copper pollution found in the Rhine was due to antifouling on boats.

"We launched legal appeals on behalf of our yacht business in Holland against this decision, " Morris told me. "The case was based on a scientific report that we could discredit completely. I think it was a political more than anything else."

Akzo Nobel was able to show less than 10% of pollution comes off boats in The Rhine. "Unfortunately when authorities get onto it, it's a Green issue, " said Morris.

"But we hope to get copper back for saltwater areas in the Netherlands in the middle of this year."

Another copper-based coating caused some excitement at METS last November.

A DTI SMART Award winner, Ecosea's Cupro FF is not a traditional antifouling - it's what Ecosea calls a highly efficient marine fouling inhibitor - no toxins are used or released into the marine environment.

Cupro FF is a copper-nickel alloy foil 150 microns thick, composed of micro-tiles 5mm square. When submersed in seawater, the surface of Cupro FF forms a very thin, tough oxide film that marine life finds inhospitable.

The micro-tiles are a coppernickel alloy that is virtually non-corrodible in clean seawater with a typical loss of 1.3 microns per year.

Once Cupro FF is immersed in seawater a complex, tough oxide layer is formed with full maturity in three months. The oxide layer is inhospitable to all marine life that tried to make a home on it. The microtile design makes fitting sheets of Cupro FF to the complex shapes of hulls and structures easier than working in flat sheets. It also acts to eliminate galvanic action.

Ecosea admits the reason for the antifouling behaviour of copper-nickel alloys is still not fully understood. Initially, it was thought copper ions leaching from the surface did the trick, but this has been disputed as copper-nickel has a lower corrosion rate than copper and still exhibits a similar level of fouling resistance.

Current theories are that the protective surface film, which forms naturally in seawater, plays a part in the antifouling mechanism.

Whatever the reason, Ecosea's test results show it works. It also has a life expectancy "in excess of 20 years".

Cladding a hull with the selfadhesive sheets is timeconsuming. It also has to be grouted once it's in place.

While perhaps not a solution for the racing brigade, Cupro FF offers savings of over £300 a year on conventional antifoulings, says Ecosea.

For Information contact Ecosea. Tel: 01543 454363.

Email: info@ecosea.co.uk Web: www.ecosea.co.uk

Copperbot returns

Another company with a liking for copper is Copperbot, which is being relaunched this spring.

Claimed to be unlike any other antifouling and truly environmentally friendly, Copperbot is a copper rich, water miscible epoxy system - a permanent copper coating where the copper particles are suspended in an epoxy coating.

The coating is said to be a low maintenance product that withstands abrasion and has a life expectancy of five to 10 years. It's suitable for GRP wooden, aluminium steel and ferro-cement boats and can be applied by brush, roller or spray.

More information from Copperbot Ltd. Tel: 023 8063 6600. Fax: 023 8023 0710 Web: www.copperbot.com

Flag Marine Paints

Following the success of its Flagship Antifouling, Flag has set up Flag Marine Paints.

And, after tests on the Crouch, the company has launched a lower cost antifouling - Flag Cruiser retails at £34.99.

Information from Flag Marine Paints. Tel: 01621 786686.

Email: danflagfinishes@zoom.

co.uk Web: www.antifoulingdirect.com