Brand

Hydrolift

Hydrolift is a Norwegian boat builder based in Fredrikstad, on the Oslofjord. The brand traces to 1985, when designer Egil Ranvig founded Hydro-Design, initially building waterski boats before moving into offshore-racing catamarans. Ranvig's stepped-hull designs dominated European offshore powerboat racing through the 1990s and also raced in the UAE, the US and Japan: a Hydro-Design/Hydrolift CR-28 driven by Tom M. Meyer set a UIM world speed record in the Offshore 6-litre class in 1993, and a modified Hydrolift CR-24 - originally a 1990 Ranvig design - won the offshore world championship as late as 2006 with driver Thomas Rosen. Ranvig's company ran into financial difficulty around the turn of the millennium. In 2002, Bård Eker's Eker Group acquired the Hydrolift name and a number of its hull molds out of the estate and continued production in Fredrikstad. Under Eker, the racing-derived stepped hulls were carried over into leisure and professional lines: a Signature series of daycruisers, a wider X-series aimed at the premium leisure market, and a Professional range built for search-and-rescue, fire and police operators. Several models, including the C27 and SX-22, have received Norway's DOGA design award. Hydrolift has been through more than one bankruptcy since joining the Eker Group, including a restructuring in 2018 and a further filing in December 2024. Eker has since restarted the brand under new corporate entities, continuing to build Signature/C-series, X-series and S-series leisure boats and Professional-series vessels in Fredrikstad.