Schat-Harding chief executive Ove Roessland acknowledged the failure of the boats in an exclusive interview from the floor with Upstream during the Offshore Technology Conference in Houston last week.

However, Roessland maintains the testing procedures on 10 April were not properly applied to his KISS1000-design rescue craft.

"We are pretty sure that during the test procedures that something went wrong," said Roessland.

"We