Ribcraft Limited, the Yeovil builder of RIBs for rescue, police and military crews since 1993, is in creditors’ voluntary liquidation, with joint liquidators appointed on 21 October, official notices show.
Anyone who has spent time around lifeboat stations, harbour patrols or the busier end of a South Coast marina will know the shape of a Ribcraft, the purposeful, deep-vee rigid inflatable that has been carrying rescue crews, police officers and military teams across rough water for decades, which is why searches for Ribcraft UK have risen so sharply on Google Trends this month. The reason is not a new model or a boat show launch but a notice in The Gazette, the official public record, confirming that Ribcraft Limited, company number 02783470, of Edward Close in Yeovil, Somerset, has been placed into creditors’ voluntary liquidation, a quietly worded line of legal text that marks the end of the UK manufacturing company behind one of Britain’s best-known professional boat names.
The official notices set out the sequence with the dry precision of the genre. Written resolutions proposed by the sole director were circulated to members on 13 October 2026 and passed on 21 October, resolving that the company be wound up voluntarily, and on the same day Neil Frank Vinnicombe and Paul Wood of BTG Begbies Traynor (Central) LLP were appointed joint liquidators by members and creditors, with the notice signed by the director, Toby Henry David Adams, and dated 22 October. The Gazette records the nature of the business simply as building RHIBs and RIBs, and notes that the company was originally called R.I.B. Craft Limited from January 1993 until April 2002, when it took the Ribcraft name by which most of the boating world knows it.
The liquidators told the trade press that 18 employees had been made redundant, with two more having handed in their notice before the liquidation, and that the directors attributed the failure to difficulty generating sales, an unsustainable cost base, operational inefficiencies and the reluctance of shareholders to commit further funds. BTG has also said that it will be making enquiries into the company’s assets and that, as part of an orderly wind-down, remaining assets are usually sold to achieve the best return for creditors, which is cold comfort to anyone who was waiting for a boat, but is at least an indication of the process now under way.
The liquidation concerns the UK company, Ribcraft Limited, and BTG has made clear that it cannot comment on other businesses using the Ribcraft name, so anyone with a Ribcraft already in service should not assume that their boat has suddenly become an orphan, since the hulls, tubes and engines themselves are well understood by RIB specialists around the country. Customers and suppliers who believe they are owed money should contact the joint liquidators directly through BTG’s Bristol office, whose details appear on the Gazette notice, rather than relying on rumour on the pontoon, and owners of boats still under build will want independent advice on the state of their hull and any parts already paid for.
For the wider boating community the loss is felt most keenly among the volunteer rescue groups and harbour authorities that rely on robust, well-built boats to do difficult jobs in bad weather, often with money raised one coffee morning at a time, and it is a reminder that even well-known British marine names are not immune to rising costs and slow-paying contracts. Ribcraft boats will be working around our coasts for many years yet, and the hope must be that the name, the moulds and the skills built up in Yeovil over more than three decades find a new home rather than disappearing altogether.
