The shipyard manufactures aluminium boats for the military, the police, coastguards, pilots, fishing and other workboat applications as well as having a presence in the leisure craft sector.

Kewatec’s president Karl-Erik Wargh was among the founders of the shipyard Alumina Varvet in Kokkola in 1978, which built large trawlers, workboats and towboats. An important customer was the Finnish defence forces, which were supplied with many Uisko boats driven by waterjets. The company name changed to FF-Jet in the late 1980s, which was bought by Kamewa in 1994. Kamewa was in turn bought by Rolls-Royce, which maintains a sizeable waterjet manufacturing presence in Kokkola.

Karl-Erik Wargh founded Kewatec in 1998. The company offers design, build and other services and, in cooperation with Marin Alutec, now builds an updated version of the Uisko design, the very rapid Jurmo boats.

In 2006 Kewatec began manufacturing a new 12m range of high speed pilot boats for Finnpilot. The first of a new 16m range is under construction and will be trialed this summer. The company also builds a range of workboats such as Emilia, seen in the accompanying photograph. The 11.5m craft has a beam of 4.5m and a draft of only 0.5m on a displacement of 10,500kg. Powered by twin 180hp Volvo D4 engines, it reaches a speed of 10 knots.