Amico & Co's Solar-Powered Genoa Yard Wins Monaco's Green Prize

What did Amico & Co win at the Monaco Yacht Show?

Amico & Co's Genoa shipyard won the Builder/Refit Shipyard category of the 2026 Blue Wake Awards, the Monaco Yacht Show's sustainability prize, for a rooftop solar array that supplies 53 percent of the site's annual energy needs.

The Blue Wake Awards, run by the Monaco Yacht Show in partnership with the Water Revolution Foundation, judged 60 verified exhibitors this year across five criteria: cutting emissions, using circular materials, smart eco-design, protecting marine life and yacht services. Entries are assessed by the Water Revolution Foundation against its own criteria before going to a jury for final selection, so a yard's submission is checked rather than simply taken on trust. Winners were announced during show week and honoured in Monaco on 25 and 26 September 2026, alongside the separate Monaco Smart and Sustainable Marina Awards held the same week at the Yacht Club de Monaco.

Amico & Co's winning system is a photovoltaic array of 1,782 panels across more than 4,300 square metres of roof, rated at just under 1 megawatt peak and built by the Turin-area firm Ceresa Next. SuperyachtNews and Yachts International both reported it as the largest privately built solar array in an Italian port area when it was installed, and the Blue Wake jury credited it with supplying 53 percent of the combined energy needs of the shipyard and its Waterfront Marina berths. Five other winners were named the same week: Termodinamica for a direct-expansion marine heat pump, Tykun for its aluminium-hulled tenders, Marina Ibiza for restoring a Posidonia seagrass meadow, and the 62-metre sailing yacht Simena for its 220-kilowatt electric motors, with VPLP Design given a special mention for a wing-sail retrofit its own figures put at a 25 to 50 percent fuel saving.

What does Amico & Co's Genoa facility actually offer?

Amico & Co is a family-run Genoa yard founded in 1991 that now runs more than 130 refit projects a year across a 65,000 square metre site, with dry docks and a lift big enough for yachts up to 170 metres.

The yard takes yachts from 30 to 140 metres and, on its own figures, can have up to 35 separate projects under way at once, including eight to ten high-complexity rebuilds a year involving lengthening, full interior redesigns or complete repowering. Its lift infrastructure covers most of what the fleet needs: a 4,000-tonne ShipLift for yachts over 95 metres with six dedicated hardstanding slots, an internal covered graving dock 102 metres long with a 31-metre air draft, a second dry dock split into two 90-metre sections each with its own retractable paint shed, and a third dock available on request for yachts up to 170 metres. Twelve covered refit and repair sheds, with forced ventilation to control temperature and humidity during paintwork, sit alongside in-house metalwork, engineering, carpentry and interior-refit departments rather than a network of subcontractors. Founder Alberto Amico has put the approach in the yard's own words: "Being a family-run shipyard means that the chain of command in the work is very short," and technical and sales director Manuel Di Tillio has said clients need more than dock space, calling a shipyard visit also "a place for quick crew refreshes."

Alongside the yard itself, Waterfront Marina offers 26 berths for yachts from 20 to 110 metres, and a separate technical marina adds 24 refit berths also capped at 110 metres. In May 2026 Amico & Co, the smaller Genoa yard Gatti, the 180-foot-capacity Amico Loano and Waterfront Marina were brought under one new umbrella brand, Amico Marine. Founder Alberto Amico described it as an attempt "to clearly and consistently represent our identity, a network of companies providing full technical and operational support to owners, crews and managers at every stage of a superyacht's life," while chief executive Bruno Guglielmini called it the result of "the long growth journey of Amico & Co." The Blue Wake Award was made to the Genoa yard specifically, so an owner comparing facilities under the new Amico Marine banner should confirm which physical site, and which infrastructure, a given credential actually covers.

Why should an owner care about a refit yard's sustainability award?

A verified solar array and shore-power supply mean less generator running time at berth and a facility better placed for tightening Mediterranean and EU emissions rules, both of which show up as running cost and downtime for the owner, not just as a certificate.

A refit or a long lay-up at a yard without full shore power means a yacht runs its own generators for hotel load, air conditioning and systems checks, burning fuel and running hours on equipment the owner would rather rest between seasons. Amico & Co's Genoa site now covers full-dock shore power alongside the solar array, and pairs it with a waste recovery system the Blue Wake judging sorted into 25 separate categories, which matters most concretely for anti-fouling residue, solvents and other paint-shed waste that a smaller or less regulated yard may simply landfill or discharge with less separation. Southern European ports have been tightening in-port emissions and waste rules through this decade, and a yard already built to a verified, jury-checked standard is better placed to absorb the next round of rules without a facility closure or a surprise surcharge mid-refit.

There is also a resale and insurance angle that owners increasingly ask brokers about: a documented refit history at a yard whose environmental standards have been independently checked is a cleaner line in a survey file than a yard with no public record at all. None of this is unique to Amico & Co, and the Blue Wake Awards named five other winners working on different parts of the same problem, from Termodinamica's heat-pump HVAC to Marina Ibiza's seagrass restoration. What the award changes for an owner is smaller and more specific: it is now possible to point at one Mediterranean full-service yard with a measured, external figure for how much of its own operation runs on something other than diesel.

What do captains who have refitted at Amico & Co actually report?

Captains cited by name on Amico & Co's own site describe repeat business built over years rather than a single good refit, including one J Class yacht that has returned to the yard for eight consecutive years.

Captain Nick Ryan of the J Class yacht Shamrock V has brought the boat back to Amico's Genoa yard for eight years running, the kind of repeat pattern that is harder to manufacture than a single positive quote. Captain John Fleckenstein of the motor yacht Apogee said the vessel "had a great experience at Amico" and expected to keep working with the yard, and the captain of the motor yacht Alibi rated the yard's refit, repair and survey work "exceptionally good."

All three of these are drawn from testimonials Amico & Co has chosen to publish itself, not from an independent captains' forum or a third-party review site, and no negative account of a refit at the yard turned up in the reporting for this piece. That is worth stating plainly rather than dressing a company-selected sample up as an independent verdict: it is real, named, on-the-record praise from working captains, and it is also a self-selected one, which is a limitation an owner should weigh alongside it rather than one the yard is likely to volunteer.

What is the honest trade-off in choosing Amico & Co for a refit?

Amico & Co offers verified sustainability infrastructure, very large-yacht lift capacity and long-standing repeat clients, set against no public pricing, a Genoa location that is a repositioning cost for any yacht based outside the western Mediterranean, and a 2026 rebrand that has not yet made clear which sustainability figures apply to which sister yard.

The strongest case for the yard is infrastructure an owner can check rather than take on faith: a jury-assessed 1-megawatt solar array, full shore power, a 25-category waste system, in-house departments that avoid stacking subcontractor markups and delays, and dry docks and a ShipLift that between them cover yachts up to 170 metres, a size bracket several Mediterranean refit yards cannot take at all. The weakest case is what the yard does not publish: no day-rate or berth tariff appears anywhere in its own materials or the trade press covering it, so every refit is quoted project by project with no public benchmark to check it against, and the 53 percent renewable figure, while real and independently judged, still leaves just under half the site's energy running on the grid or on-site generation.

For an owner whose yacht is based in the Caribbean, the Gulf or Southeast Asia, Genoa is also simply a long way to sail or ship a hull for a refit, whatever the yard's environmental credentials; the award changes the case for a yacht already summering in the Mediterranean far more than it changes the case for one that is not. Fill in the two things the award does not answer before committing a yacht: get a written quote and a firm slot date rather than relying on the yard's own client list, and confirm in writing whether a refit contracted through the new Amico Marine umbrella will actually be carried out at the Genoa site that won the prize, or at one of its sister yards.