Are Hannibal Safari roof top tents made in Australia?
Yep, they sure are! Our canvas fold out tents are made to the highest specification.
That’s why we get to proudly share this little logo.
How is it made?
Australian Made Roof Top Tents are hard to come by.
Here's how we manufacture our tents. (Part 1 of 5)
We want to share with you how we make a Hannibal Safari Roof Top Tent
How we make a HannibalRoof Top Tent Part 1 of 5
A little backstory about how we started making the tents locally in Australia.
The Hannibal roof top tent is renowned for being the best roof top tent on the Australian market place today. The questions that we are commonly asked is why choose a Hannibal tent over all of the others in the market and what makes it so different from the rest? The answer is reasonably straight forward: Quality materials and a bit of TLC. (That’s Tender Loving Care for those playing at home).
Not many people realise that just about all the Hannibal tents that you see these days have been assembled in our facility in Brisbane. We started assembling the tents locally back in 2008 and supplied our own Aussie built tents whilst we were waiting on new shipments from South Africa. 2012 came around and we made the decision to bring the manufacturing of the tents completely in house.
THE BEST QUALITY AUSTRALIAN MADE ROOF TOP TENT
So how do we make a Hannibal Tent? We start by making the baseboard.
Making the baseboard: We use a 12mm marine or external construction grade ply. The 12mm board has multiple cross branding layers of sheet which are bonded by using A-Bonded glue. The use of this particular board and glue gives an extremely strong, stable, yet resilient platform for the mounting of the tent body which will not become an issue if it’s exposed to the elements. Australia has some of the harshest conditions in the world, (and for some reason we love camping in them) so the tent is made to handle, and last, in Australian conditions.
All of our baseboards have a stiffener board frame on the top and bottom to add even further strength to the platform. This ensures a rigid stable floor to ensure a great night’s sleep.
The board is coated with a UV stable decking stain that will seal the timber as well as protect the board against mildew, mould and any other fungal growth.
Why does Hannibal use timber when everyone else uses a composite board with polystyrene capped with an ally sheet?
Simple. Even though the stain we use to paint the board does a great job at sealing the timber, the board has still got some ability to be absorbent. What some customers don’t realise is that the moisture in the tent can be absorbed by the mattress. Users of other brand Roof Top Tents quite often complain of feeling damp because of this. We often see some ‘main brands’ providing special mattress covers or layers that allow an air gap to help manage moisture. So that extra ‘feature’ they’re selling you, is really just to cover up a known issue with these tents.
So where does the moisture come from? Well, every breath of air that is expelled as you breathe has moisture, as well as the perspiration from your skin. Atmospheric conditions may also have a high moisture content especially in humid environments. It’s important that there are elements within the tent construction that helps you manage this moisture.
Another reason we use timber comes back to ease of access to materials to repair or replace in the event of damage caused by driving into the wrong car park or tree or whatever. (Believe me, I’ve done it myself!)
Assembly
The baseboard is assembled using a special ‘finger join’ on both boards that lock together for a firm platform.
3mm stainless steel hinge brackets are bolted into place and then we start the framing process for the tent.
Stay tuned for Step 2! Please contact us more information about how we build our tents. We’re a bit of an open book because we want to show you the quality of our tents that other manufacturers simply cannot.