ROME — Callegari, the Italian boatbuilder relaunched in June, unveiled plan for its new Callegari 48, a 14.94-metre rigid inflatable boat built almost entirely in carbon fibre, marking its bet on aerospace manufacturing techniques.
“Italy remains our natural starting point, because it is the reference market for world boating and the place where the Callegari brand was born,” said Jacopo Recchia, chief executive of Gommoni Callegari and of Aviorec Composites. “Our sights are set on international markets, the United States, the Middle East, and the Asia Pacific area.”
The company began in Ravenna, in Emilia-Romagna, as a maker of sacks and waterproof tarpaulins. Trade catalogues printed in the city in 1913 advertise covers for carts, lorries, and motorboats, alongside oilskins for soldiers and hunters.
Rubberised fabric led into inflatable boats, and the Callegari trademark was registered on March 16, 1977. The company says it employed more than 1,200 people at its height, supplying police forces, armies, and navies in several countries.
Aerospace transfer
The new hull comes from Aviorec, a composites firm owned by the Recchia industrial group that has built structural parts and helicopter rotor blades for aircraft manufacturers since 2006. The boat uses resin infusion, controlled post curing, and a hull shaped through computational fluid dynamics, software modelling of water flow.
The exterior design is by Lorenzo Guadagnucci, while Francesca Rubbi heads design at the yard. The base price is reported at about 1.2 million euro.
“At 1.2 million euro the Callegari 48 enters at the very top of the maxi RIB range, above where established names like Anvera and Tecnorib start and alongside the Greek builders such as Technohull that dominate our charter waters,” said George P. Biniaris, Founder and Managing Broker, George Yachts Brokerage House. “There is room for a new entrant at that level, but only with flawless build quality and real after-sales, because at this price the buyer is comparing you to a small yacht.”
“Heritage is a nice story; delivery is what sells the second hull,” he told Italy Now.
Anagni bet
Production has moved from Ravenna to Anagni, a town in the Frosinone area of Lazio some 70 kilometres southeast of Rome, where the group already makes composite parts for aircraft. Two smaller boats, of nine and seven metres, have been announced on the same carbon platform. This month it also announced the acquisition of Geniuss, a custom tender specialist with a patented outboard motor system, to expand into smaller segments of the boating market.
The relaunch follows a familiar route in Italian manufacturing, where dormant names are paired with materials drawn from aerospace and defence to reach buyers who will pay for provenance. Callegari now has a brand, a factory, and a hull. What it does not yet have is a boat in the water, and the dock at Cannes is where that changes.
