Wider’s new home set to open early 2023

It’s been less than a year since the building plans for Wider‘s new shipyard in Fano were announced and seemingly the heavy foundation work is almost complete. The 18,000-sqm seafront site between the fishing port and the tourist marina is scheduled to start up production next February.

“The new shipyard will be a real innovation centre,” says Marcello Maggi, who heads up W-Fin Sarl, the holding company that owns 100 per cent of Wider equity. “It’s where all our future boats, new green technologies and new ideas coming from start-uppers will come to life in full compliance with environmental issues. In other words, a pole of excellence not only for the city of Fano, but also for the Italian boatbuilding industry.”

Plans for the new Wider site in Fano

The first project to be assembled in the new facility, which includes 350 linear metres of quayside and a travel lift, will be the WiderCat 92, the power catamaran series, of which five units have already been sold.

Although 14 metres in height, the building’s profile is broken up by large glass surfaces so both office staff and workers on the shop floor can benefit from plenty of natural light, says Wider. Materials, components and the finished yachts can be easily moved in and out of the shed via four enormous doorways for each of the two sides facing the east and west of the building.

The roof will be covered by solar cells and the facility is expected to be virtually self-sufficient in renewable solar power.

“The brief was for a structure based on sustainable principles and striking design that also provided the kind of the functional efficiencies associated with modern boatbuilding processes,” says architect Alessandro Massari. “It’s not easy to design something that is beautiful but also practical from an industrial perspective.

“My own studio is just a few hundred metres from the site of the new shipyard, so like other inhabitants of the town it was very important for me that the building should look good and not be an eyesore.”

Earlier this year, Wider Yachts appointed MarineMax as its exclusive North American dealer for its production line of catamarans. All of the models utilise the Wider serial hybrid propulsion system.

The catamaran division at Wider is separate from the company’s superyacht division.