MerConcept hits 20 years and turns offshore racing tech into an electric ferry for Concarneau

From skipper support to a 70-person maritime firm

MerConcept turned 20 this year. Founded in 2006 by offshore sailor François Gabart while he was still a student at INSA, the company began as the support structure behind his own racing career, initially incubated by Michel Desjoyeaux’s organization. It has since grown into a 70-person operation working out of a 3,000 m² building in Concarneau, Brittany.

The early years served Gabart’s sporting project. In 2013 the company hired around ten people and took on the MACIF trimaran, launched in 2015. From 2018 it began working for others, managing Charlie Dalin’s IMOCA Apivia, then coordinating the design of the 11th Hour Racing IMOCA that won The Ocean Race 2023. It went on to build the IMOCAs of Maxime Sorel and Elodie Bonnafous.

In 2020 MerConcept moved into its Concarneau base with 1,400 m² of workshop space and became a mission-driven company (entreprise à mission). The following year it launched the SVR-Lazartigue trimaran, on which its teams handled project management, design and assembly. That same year it restructured into three departments: offshore racing, construction and maritime mobility.

Three boats on the Route du Rhum start line

MerConcept fields three boats at the start of the 2026 Route du Rhum, two of them among the favorites in their class.

The 32-metre foiling trimaran SVR-Lazartigue is skippered by Tom Laperche. Drawn by the VPLP firm with MerConcept’s engineers and fully assembled in its workshops between 2020 and 2021, it is the flagship of the company’s foil expertise.

The IMOCA MACIF Santé Prévoyance, now skippered by Sam Goodchild, is the boat on which Charlie Dalin won the Vendée Globe 2024-2025. MerConcept handled its design, construction and project management.

The third entry is the Ocean Fifty UpWind by MerConcept, skippered by Anne-Claire Le Berre since 2025. The project is an explicit push to open up a place for women in offshore racing, particularly in multihulls.

Racing tech repurposed for commercial shipping

For maritime transport, MerConcept offers two solutions drawn directly from offshore racing: flying boats on foils and using wind for propulsion. The pitch is applied problem-solving: cut a vessel’s fuel burn, propel it by wind, lighten a structure.

Several projects are in progress. Vela is a sail-powered trimaran-cargo conceived with François Gabart to move goods. SolidSail is a rigid-sail program developed with Chantiers de l’Atlantique. FOIL Infinity focuses on repairable and recyclable composite foils, with composites tested above 40 knots.

Bluebird is a foiling electric catamaran aimed at passenger transport and technology trials. It sits alongside the pure-electric ferry as the company’s clearest signal that it is moving hull-flighting and lightweight-composite know-how into working commercial vessels.

The Concarneau electric ferry

The project most relevant to readers here is the electric ferry for Concarneau itself. MerConcept is building a vessel able to carry 145 passengers and up to 6 bicycles.

The source does not disclose range in nautical miles, cruise speed, battery capacity or charging power, so the key operating numbers are not yet public. What is clear is the direction: a battery-electric passenger boat for local service, built in the same workshops and by the same teams that assemble 32-metre foiling trimarans.

The honest caveat is that this is a construction-stage project. As of the anniversary announcement, the ferry is described as “en construction” (under construction), not yet launched or proven in service. Configuration details beyond passenger and bicycle count are thin, and no delivery date or operator is named in the release. Readers should treat the ferry as a real, funded build rather than a concept, but hold off on performance claims until the hull is in the water and the charging and range figures are published.

A testing ground for composite and foil work

The FOIL Infinity program is worth watching for what it signals about cost and repairability. Racing foils are traditionally stiff, light and difficult to repair; making them repairable and recyclable matters more in commercial service, where downtime and replacement cost drive economics. That program, combined with the Bluebird foiling electric catamaran, suggests MerConcept is treating the passenger-ferry and trial-vessel work as a way to validate foil and composite technology outside the race course.

None of this is vaporware in the racing sense: the boats exist and are race-proven. The commercial translation is earlier-stage, which is a reasonable position to hold after 20 years of building and launching boats.