Sunreef Yachts was founded in Gdansk in 2002 by the French businessman Francis Lapp, who leased part of the old Gdansk Shipyard to build catamarans in a country with no such tradition. Lapp had come to the idea after chartering in the Indian Ocean and finding no large, comfortable multihull he could buy. The first boat, a 22.5 metre catamaran, launched in July 2003. From that start the yard set out to build large custom multihulls that did not yet exist on the market.
The 2003 launch of a 74 foot oceangoing catamaran with a flybridge marked the yard's real arrival and shifted how designers thought about multihulls. Sunreef grew from a leased corner of a closed shipyard into a large builder exhibiting at the major shows. By 2024 the company reported it had sold well over 500 boats. The city gives the yard a deep pool of skilled labour and a shipbuilding history to draw on, and Gdansk remains the home of the operation.
Sunreef built its name on large, fully custom catamarans, both sailing and power, drawn and finished in house rather than assembled from a standard range. It treats each boat as a one off shaped to the owner's brief, with little fixed across the line. That approach put it at the top of the luxury multihull class, a position it has held as the market for catamarans has grown. The yard's own studio handles naval architecture and interiors together.
The range now spans compact cruisers to superyachts of 40 metres and more, in sailing and power forms with a newer performance line. Boats like the Sunreef 80 helped define what a large sailing catamaran could be, while the Ultima line pushed the yard into fast powercats. The common thread is bespoke building, so an owner can shape the boat around how they mean to use it. That flexibility is a large part of why the brand sits where it does.
The clearest mark of the modern yard is its Eco range, a line of solar electric catamarans that aim to cruise and lie at anchor without a generator running. Sunreef laminates its own photovoltaic cells straight into the hulls and the superstructure, so the solar becomes part of the boat. The energy feeds large battery banks that run the house loads and, on many boats, assist or drive the propulsion. The programme now reaches across both the sailing and the power ranges.
Eco models range from the compact 50 Eco up to the 100 Eco supercat and the 40M Explorer, along with power boats like the 60 Sunreef Power Eco. The yard quotes serious figures for these systems, such as a 770 kilowatt hour battery on the 100 Eco and cells rated near 25 per cent efficiency. The pitch is a boat that stays quiet and self sufficient at anchor, which many owners now rank above outright speed. This is the direction that sets Sunreef apart from most of its rivals today.
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