Arcadia Yachts

A Family Yard Built Around Flush Decks and Solar Power

Arcadia Yachts is controlled by the Naples area Pellegrino family, led by Ugo Pellegrino, a third generation entrepreneur whose background is in the petrochemical and plastics industry rather than boatbuilding. Sources genuinely disagree on the founding year: a YachtBuyer heritage page gives 2007, a SuperYacht24 interview with Pellegrino points to 2008 as when the family pivoted into yacht manufacturing, and Arcadia's own official site ties its founding to 22 December 2009, the date the first A85 launched at the Dusseldorf boat show. This overview uses 2009 as the company's own stated date, while flagging that other sources put it a year or two earlier. Francesco Guida is credited in several sources as co-founder and chief in-house designer, though at least one independent review conflates his work with that of the Milan studio Hot Lab on later hulls, and this research could not resolve that credit cleanly. By around 2020 the yard employed roughly 150 people and had delivered somewhere between 30 and 34 yachts across its range, figures that come from a company heritage page and a since-blocked trade press retrospective rather than an audited total.

Pellegrino has described the brand's founding concept in his own words, to SuperYacht24 in December 2022, as oriented from the start toward green and eco-sustainability and slow navigation modes, adding pointedly that there is much communication on sustainability across the industry but little substance behind most of it. That positioning shows up as flush, single-level main deck living, full height glazing and integrated solar power on every model since the first A85. The current range, confirmed directly from Arcadia's own live site, runs A80new, A85, A96, A105, A115, Sherpa 60 and Sherpa 80. No source found documents any outside investment or change of ownership; the yard appears to remain under Pellegrino family control, though no formal company registry search was carried out to confirm this independently.