Delivery of the first Outremer 45 Made in Lorient
Announced as soon as Marsaudon Composites was acquired by the Grand Large Yachting group in September 2023, the arrival of Outremer catamarans at the Lorient site passed another milestone on April 30, 2024. The customer of the 1st Outremer 45 built in Brittany was able to celebrate with the shipyard's teams and local councillors the completion of the production halls for his multihull. Xavier Desmarest, co-founder of the group, is delighted with this rapid result: "7 months after taking over the company in court, we are where we wanted to be on this date. There were very quick exchanges between La Grande Motte and Lorient. It wasn't all that simple. But the mayonnaise took. Outremer is keeping the site running, and ORC is on the move again."
At the time of our visit, 2 ORCs and 4 Outremer 45s were in production.
Relaunch of the ORC brand
After reorganizing the site to accommodate production of the Outremer 45, and thus relieving the pressure on the Grande Motte factory, the Grand Large Yachting group has officially relaunched ORC, the Lorient-based shipyard's own brand. A new brand manager, Pierre-Yves Poulain, has joined the team. After delivery of the last ORCs sold prior to the acquisition, sales efforts were relaunched. He explains: "There have already been serious discussions since La Grande Motte. While keeping things simple and light, we're working with an interior designer to be able to work on interiors with identical mass specifications. We're also going to draw on the strength of the Grand Large group to work on the ORC brand for export."
Xavier Desmarest adds: "ORC is yet another way of sailing compared to the other brands in the Grand Large group, and we felt that there are aficionados and real potential."
A showcase site for Grand Large Yachting
The French nautical group is showing its ambitions for this new acquisition. The Lorient site has already seen the recruitment of over 30 employees in 7 months, increasing its workforce from 67 to over 100. The opening of Grand Large Services Bretagne means that group boats undergoing refit in Southern Brittany can now be accommodated there, while Escale Formations Techniques - EFT - has moved from Nantes to Lorient, where the subsidiary continues to provide training for prospective yachtsmen and may be entrusted with new missions.
Xavier Desmarest has drawn up an ambitious guideline for Lorient: "Lorient is our 4.0 production site, and must serve as a showcase. If we're going to rethink the site, we might as well think about new technologies for efficient, high-quality production, and come up with ambitious solutions. With the arrival of EFT, currently an external training center for yachtsmen, we can also imagine turning it into an internal training center for the group, and even think about opening it up to other companies, in line with Composite Valley. Lorient is an attractive destination with a hub effect, because there are skills and prospects for advancement. We might as well attract people and give them skills, and rather than 'stealing' employees, grow the pool of competent people."
