NEWS FROM THE HONDA MARINE SIDE
The New Face of Honda Marine in Mauritius and Reunion There are not many things that Alain Talbot, the managing director of Talbot Engineering and now also the official Honda Marine dealer representative in both Mauritius and Reunion, hasn’t achieved in the marine industry.
With an abundance of knowledge and practical skills imparted upon him by his father, Robert Talbot, Honda Marine SA has found a strong partner in Alain with whom they will strive to broaden the reach of the Honda brand further into the Indian Ocean Archipelago.
Early Days
The Talbot name has always been synonymous with fishing and it was in Mauritius that Alain’s father, Robert learned his trade. It was in 1967 that Robert Talbot decided to settle in Durban, South Africa and it was there that he started work on a mammoth project, namely the construction of Talbot II, a 20m ferro-cement fishing vessel with a storage capacity of 30 tons, refrigerated at -20C.
At the time this was the largest vessel of its kind to be built in South Africa. She took eight years of planning and 20 months of intensive seven-days a week labour to construct. Launched in September 1975, it was Robert himself who acted as captain, fishing master, mechanical engineer and refrigeration engineer, and fished off the KwaZulu-Natal coast from South Africa all the way up to Mozambique for the next two years.
In May 1977, Robert decided to return to Mauritius with Talbot II and his 8-year old son Alain, where fishing expeditions in the St Brandon region proved very successful, allowing the Talbot Fishing operation to be firmly established and for this initial start-up concern to be built up over time into many other local marine-related businesses…