The VPLP naval architecture practice which is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year was created in 1983 by Marc Van Peteghem and Vincent Lauriot Prévost.
After studying together at the Southampton Institute, the two young naval architects settled in Marseille to take part in the development of racing trimarans. Rapid technological advances were being made at the time.
They very soon decided to move to Paris for practical reasons of mobility but also to organize their work on new orders for cruising catamarans; they were able to apply their experience gained with racing trimarans to these new projects. The alliance of these two skills is now the typical signature of VPLP multihull vessels.
Since 1996, the company has been active on two sites in Paris and at Vannes in Brittany where the head office has been located since 2004. Today, VPLP employs 28 persons in all, headed up by Marc Van Peteghem in Paris and Vincent Lauriot Prévost in Vannes.
A number of very large projects designed by VPLP have attracted the attention of the general public and media of late: the launch of the world’s biggest racing trimaran, the 40 metre Maxi Banque Populaire V, designed to beat every existing world record, the BMW ORACLE maxi trimaran and the world’s biggest sailing catamaran (45 metres), due to be launched next year.
In the past twenty-five years, VPLP has become the leader on the multihull market through:
- Design of cruising multihull sailboats built by the CNB Lagoon yard, a subsidiary of the Bénéteau Group, the world leader in series production of cruising catamarans.
- Design of individually built multihull cruisers. The biggest unit of this kind ever to have been built anywhere in the world, with a length of 45 metres, is currently on the stocks in the United States.
- Design of ocean-going multihull racers which today win places on the podiums and beat ocean racing records, headed by the world’s finest skippers.
- Design of powered transatlantic multihull boats, series built in China.
- The design of multihull “working boats” (ambulance boats, fishing boats, ecological day charters).
www.vplp.fr
