Orion Yachts' First-Ever Superyacht Lists for EUR 22m

What is Orion One, and who built her?

Orion One is a 43.8-metre displacement yacht and the first superyacht Orion Yachts has ever completed. She was delivered in May 2026, designed by Red Yacht Design with naval architecture from Alfa Marine Design, and is now for sale through Fraser at EUR 22,000,000.

Orion Yachts is the newly formed superyacht division of Turkey's Trabzon Shipyard group, building at the Hersek Gemi facility in Altinova, near Yalova on the Sea of Marmara. Orion One has a steel hull and an aluminium superstructure, runs to a beam of 8.1 metres and a draft of 2.48 metres, and carries teak decking over a displacement hull. Twin Caterpillar C32 diesels rated at 1,450 hp each give her a cruising speed of 12 knots and a top speed of 15 knots, backed by two 86 kW and one 51 kW Caterpillar generators. She is classed by Registro Italiano Navale and flagged in Malta.

Her gross tonnage is not as settled as the rest of the spec sheet. Trabzon Shipyard's own Orion Yachts page states 480 GT, matching BOAT International's delivery report, YachtBuyer's database and autoevolution's coverage of the launch. Fraser's brokerage listing, the document a buyer actually signs against, states 450 GT twice and markets her explicitly as a sub-499 GT yacht. Neither side has corrected the other at the time of writing, so a buyer should ask Fraser directly which number appears on Orion One's actual tonnage certificate before assuming the broker's figure is the measured one. The same two sources agree on her range, at 1,500 nautical miles at 15 knots, a figure YachtBuyer alone had previously paired with the wrong cruising speed.

How long did it take Orion Yachts to build its first superyacht?

Orion Yachts began developing Orion One as a concept in 2022, launched the hull at its Yalova sheds in May 2026, and brought her to the Cannes Yachting Festival in September 2026 already carrying a price tag. Four years covers the entire span from a new yard's first sketch to its first paying customer's decision.

Red Yacht Design led both the exterior and interior architecture, working with naval architecture from Alfa Marine Design. Fatih Surekli, the design studio's co-founder, has described the commission in blunt terms: "Creating the first yacht of a new shipyard comes with a different kind of responsibility." Alfa Marine's Cihan Sandikcioglu, who signed off the hull engineering, put the emphasis on structure rather than styling: "Her steel hull gives her strength and confidence expected from a yacht in this category." Trabzon Shipyard itself is a commercial builder first: its yards normally turn out dry cargo ships, liquid cargo and chemical tankers, and towing boats for owners who never see a brochure. Orion Yachts is the division built to take that hull-building capacity into the superyacht market, which is also why Orion One reads, in places, like a workboat engineered to a residential standard rather than a styling exercise with an engine bolted in.

Neither quote mentions a production run, and Orion Yachts has not said whether Orion One starts a series or stands as a one-off demonstrator built to prove the yard can deliver. That distinction matters more for a first hull than for a tenth: a yard with an established model line has sister ships, service history and resale comparables behind every new sale, and Orion Yachts currently has none of those behind this one. Her debut at Cannes, alongside far larger and better-known names, was the yard's first public test of whether the market will treat a completed hull from an unknown builder as seriously as its own marketing does.

Why does it matter that Orion One stays under 500 GT?

Every added gross tonne past 500 GT pulls a yacht into the SOLAS commercial-vessel rulebook, and naval architects who design against that limit put the resulting jump in crew and running costs at roughly USD 150,000 to 160,000 a year. Staying at 450 to 480 GT keeps Orion One clear of that line entirely, and Fraser is marketing the headroom it buys rather than apologising for the boat's size.

Crossing 500 GT is not a paperwork formality. Per BOAT International's reporting on the rule, it brings mandatory SOLAS safety equipment, ISPS security compliance and an ISM code that requires a dedicated shoreside manager, raises the certification level required of the captain and watch officers, adds an engineer position and two more deckhands, and forces a 15 percent increase in crew cabin size under the MLC 2006 seafarer welfare code. Fire insulation has to extend from the engine room to the galley and port fees rise as well. None of that is unique to Orion One. It is the standing cost of the extra tonne, and it is the same arithmetic that has pushed other 2026 launches, including Maiora's Supernova 50, to stop just short of the line.

What Orion Yachts and Fraser are selling on the back of it is volume efficiency: a 43.8-metre yacht that packs 12-guest, five-cabin accommodation and a full flybridge hot tub into a tonnage band more often associated with boats several metres shorter. Whether 450 GT or 480 GT is the true figure, both keep her well inside the threshold with room to spare, a wider margin than yards playing the rule down to the final tonne usually leave themselves. That margin is also why the discrepancy over her exact tonnage is unlikely to be commercially decisive. A buyer this far under the line does not need to worry about a measurement error tipping the boat into SOLAS territory, the way an owner sitting at 498 or 499 GT would.

What's the catch with buying the first yacht from a new shipyard?

The catch is provenance, not the boat itself. Orion One skips the three to four year order book that a custom build normally demands, but she comes with no independent sea trial, no delivered sister ship and no resale history to check her price against.

Everything published about her performance so far, cruising speed, top speed and fuel burn, comes from the yard's own press materials and Fraser's brokerage listing rather than a magazine sea trial or a class society witnessed run. That is normal for a yacht days out of the water, but it means a buyer is taking Orion Yachts' own numbers on faith in a way he would not need to on a tenth generation Sanlorenzo or Ferretti hull, where a decade of independently tested sister ships sets the baseline. No owner has taken delivery yet, so there are no owner reports, positive or negative, to weigh against the brochure.

Against that, the case for buying is straightforward: a fully completed, RINA classed, Malta flagged 44-metre with a Minotti interior and a fold-down owner's balcony, available now at EUR 22,000,000, against a market where an equivalent custom order would not deliver until 2029 or 2030. For an owner who wants a boat this year rather than a design brief and a three year wait, that trade is real. For an owner who weighs resale as heavily as delivery date, buying the first hull of an unproven yard is the more expensive bet of the two, whatever the asking price says.