About Azimut shipyard
Azimut Yachts founder, Paolo Vitelli, came to yachting when he was still a student, and like many others he started with chartering and selling yachts. Early in the 1970s the mass shift to fiberglass hulls urged him to start collaborating with the Dutch to make yachts of his own. The first of them were built in the Netherlands, but later manufacturing moved to Italy, where Azimut Yachts created lots of super popular models. In 1985 Azimut’s commercial success allowed them to buy Benetti shipyard and to start working on large superyachts. Constant development and construction of new production facilities allowed Azimut-Benetti to reach the leading positions in modern yacht industry.
Highlights
Today Azimut’s collection is really large and consists of six versatile ranges. The shipyard builds sport and flybridge planing yachts (S and Fly series); Atlantis sport cruisers with inboard engines and outboard-powered Verve performance models. Azimut Magellano range launched in 2008 became a breakthrough in the industry and started the popularity of semi-displacement yachts that are not as speedy as the planing ones, but are still quite fast and fuel efficient, which enables considerably longer range. Their semi-displacement hulls styled by renowned designer Ken Freivokh are efficient and seaworthy over a wide speed range. And finally, there’s Grande line, which is Azimut’s largest superyachts built in a semi-custom way, taking into account particular client’s wishes.
Achievements
Early in the 1980s Azimut Yachts was the first to build a 30-metre yacht of fiberglass for a Kuwaiti prince. Azimut yacths have always been valued for excellent exterior and interior design, which has been supervised by the famous duo of Stefano Righini and Carlo Galeazzi. Today even more sumptuous interiors are created by Achile Salvagni and Francesco Guida.
