Aventura sailboats: a French mold-reuse startup that grew into a Tunisian catamaran builder
Aventura Yachts began in 2000, when Eric Roger and his son Romain founded the brand in Marans, near La Rochelle, France, building it on their acquisition of Go Marine, a manufacturer of small sport catamarans. What started as a French mold-reuse operation relocated to Tunisia within five years, and the shipyard behind it, STGi, has shaped Aventura ever since — first from borrowed molds, then from its own designs, and eventually under the Lasta Design Studio partnership that has designed the brand's catamarans from the Aventura 34 onward.
Origins and ownership
The Aventura 23 — later renamed the 23.5 — was the brand's launch model, made possible by reusing Go Marine's Camping Cat molds. The pattern continued: the Aventura 28, in 2002, reused molds from another small catamaran, the Diabolo, and the Aventura 36, in 2004, was similar to the Edel 36. STGi, the shipyard building these boats, had been founded in the early 2000s specializing in design and composite construction; in 2005 it moved production to Tazarka, near Nabeul in Tunisia, where Aventura launched its first catamarans that weren't built from someone else's molds — the Aventura 20, 33 and 43, arriving in an order that differs between Multihulls World's two retrospectives.
STGi wasn't building catamarans exclusively at the time. It also produced monohulls for the brand Kerkena Sailing from 2005 to 2017 and fishing-type boats for Sterne Fish Motor Boats from 2007 to 2017, before a strong increase in Aventura's own business led the yard to drop both other brands and focus solely on Aventura.
Roughly a decade after the Tunisia move, designer Samer Lasta of Lasta Design Studio took over Aventura's catamaran designs, starting with the Aventura 34, and STGi relocated again to a new factory in the Menzel Bourguiba Freezone near Bizerte, within the grounds of a former French Navy arsenal. Sources don't agree on the timing: Multihulls World has published 2015 for the Bizerte move in two separate pieces, while STGi's own history page dates it to 2014; and where Multihulls World places the Lasta handover around that same mid-2010s window, STGi's own account instead describes it as a range renewal announced in 2017 for the 2018 model year, covering the Aventura 34, 44, 10 and 14 Power.
Construction through the eras
STGi's composite-construction specialization shows most clearly in its infusion work. The Aventura 37, launched in 2021, is built entirely by vacuum resin infusion in female molds, using a sandwich matrix of Airex foam, glass and polyester, with its underwater hulls sandwich-built down to the base of the skegs. That infusion process runs on a materials partnership with SAERTEX: Aventura's production manager, Marwa Ben Azzouz, has credited SAERTEX with supporting the yard's development of the infusion process and named it the main partner for glass-fiber materials specifically. SAERTEX reinforcements at Aventura span structural hull parts and complex small components; sustainable flax-fiber components, by contrast, appear only in new prototypes, not in production hulls. By the time of Multihulls World's 2026 factory-tour feature, STGi had also spent just over two years producing all of its boats' wood components in house, including teak decking and veneers.
Lines and generations
At the Menzel Bourguiba yard, STGi expanded its sailing catamaran range with the Aventura 44, then the 37 and the 45, and — per Multihulls World's factory-tour feature — was at the time preparing the 43 and 47 for the lineup. A weekend cruiser, the Aventura 38, followed in 2025. STGi also built a power catamaran line: its own history page dates the brand's first entirely engine-driven model to 2016, the same year Multihulls World credits with the A10's debut. STGi followed the A10 with the A14, which became the Aventura 50 MY and is now also built in a 56-foot version. By Multihulls World's January 2025 retrospective, STGi's range stood at four models, built at a rate of roughly 50 units a year.
Who Aventura is for
Aventura suits buyers drawn to a small, single-yard catamaran brand rather than a high-volume production line: STGi has been the only shipyard behind Aventura since relocating to Tazarka in 2005, and the Lasta Design Studio partnership has shaped both its sailing catamarans, from the 34 through the 45 and the 38, and its power catamarans, the 50 MY and 56.
