T700 Milano

Milan style on a Genoa hull

Tankoa introduced the Milano at Dubai in 2024 as the first fruit of its partnership with Nauta Design, the Milan studio behind some of the most admired exteriors of the past two decades. The name is a double tribute, to the studio's home and to the city's standing in fashion and design. Underneath the styling sits classic Tankoa construction, a steel hull and aluminium superstructure engineered to Lloyd's Register class.

The measurements put the Milano just below the yard's Apache flagship, 70 metres overall on an 11.8 metre beam with gross tonnage of around 1,480 and draught of 3.35 metres at half load. It is a size chosen with intent. The yacht clears the 1,000 GT threshold into genuine big-boat volume while remaining manageable in the Mediterranean harbours where an Italian-built yacht will spend her summers.

Nauta's calm, stretched lines

Nauta's signature has always been restraint, and the Milano wears it in long horizontal lines that visually stretch the hull and tie the yacht to the sea around her. Tankoa describes the brief as timeless, the same word it applies across the range, and the profile avoids the aggressive angles fashionable elsewhere in the 70 metre class. This is a yacht drawn to look right in twenty years, which is exactly how long an owner may keep her.

The design puts unusual weight on perspective views, clean sightlines down the decks and out over the water, with balanced volumes front to back. For owners the practical result is exterior deck space that feels domestic, wide, uncluttered and easy to furnish, and a superstructure that does not loom over the aft pools. It is architecture first, decoration second.

A 70 metre Nauta design with a 145 square metre beach club and a hull ready for methanol fuel cells.

A 145 square metre beach club

The Milano's social centre is its beach club, roughly 145 square metres of sea-level space served by folding hull platforms and a 6.5 metre swimming pool. Four of the guest cabins sit on the lower deck with direct access to this area, an arrangement that turns the waterline into the daily living level for family and guests. The engine room is configured below the lower deck specifically to free this space.

Higher up, the main deck garage swallows two serious tenders of nine and 8.5 metres, keeping the aft decks clear of chocks and cranes. Accommodation in the published layout runs to fourteen guests in seven cabins. The plans remain semi-custom, so an owner can trade cabins for a larger spa, an office or a private deck as the brief demands.

Diesel-electric now, methanol next

The Milano's most forward-looking sheet is the propulsion menu. The base offering is diesel-electric, driving the yacht to a top speed of about 16.5 knots with the quiet running and flexible load management that electric distribution brings. Above that, Tankoa has engineered the platform to accept methanol fuel cells delivering up to 200 kW of power, among the first yards to offer the option at this size.

For an owner the fuel cell provision is insurance as much as ideology. Emission rules in the Mediterranean and Northern Europe are tightening year by year, and a 70 metre yacht ordered today will trade through decades of them. A hull prepared for methanol keeps its options, and its value, open. The diesel-electric baseline already runs cleaner and quieter than conventional shafts.

Where the Milano fits

In Tankoa's range the Milano is the volume play, the yacht for an owner who wants close to the flagship's space with a calmer design language. Against the wider market it lines up with the 70 metre semi-customs from the established northern yards, and its argument is Italian design pedigree, a boutique build relationship and the propulsion flexibility the bigger production lines have been slower to offer.

The model remains at the project stage, so the first owner gets first-hull privileges, choosing layouts and finishes while shaping details of the debut. Tankoa's record of turning concepts into water is strong, the T55 Sportiva and T450 both went from renderings to deliveries inside a few years, and the yard's Civitavecchia expansion gives the Milano a shed to be built in.

The propulsion menu, and why it matters

Unlike most yachts of this size, which are sold with a fixed engine room, Tankoa is offering the Milano with a genuine choice. The default is diesel-electric: four variable-speed Caterpillar C32 generators, about 940 ekW each, feed a pair of electric motors of roughly 1,650 kW that turn the shafts, for a reported top speed of 16.5 knots. This is a well-used architecture in the 70-metre-plus bracket, valued for quieter running and lower part-load fuel burn than a conventional mechanical drivetrain, and nothing a classification society has not signed off on many times before.

The more speculative half of the menu is the methanol fuel cell option, said to add up to 200 kW. Tankoa's stated reasoning is that methanol is easier to store than hydrogen, a stable liquid at ambient conditions rather than a cryogenic gas, while still cutting emissions a diesel-electric system alone cannot. That is a sound argument on paper. What it is not, on everything publicly available, is a system that has been built, installed and run at sea. Tankoa's own language describes the yard as still selecting suppliers, which is shipyard language for not finalised. A buyer drawn to the Milano for the fuel cell story should treat it as a roadmap item to verify at contract stage, not a feature to take on faith from the unveiling renderings. One broker's own pages do not even agree with each other on when a hull might be ready, with build-slot dates for the same project spotted as far apart as late 2028 and late 2030, which is itself a sign that nobody has a firm delivery date to give a buyer yet.

Pour qui: The owner planning to keep a 70 metre yacht for decades, who values quiet Nauta lines, waterline living space and a propulsion plant that will still be welcome in the harbours of 2040.