Mylius sailboats: a small Italian yard built by racers, kept close to one designer's hand
Mylius is not a high-volume production brand. It's a small Italian yard whose founders raced to finish their first boat in time for a single boat show, whose growth was funded by a packaging-industry family rather than a public parent company, and whose sailing range -- more than two decades and dozens of hulls later -- has still been shaped almost entirely by the same designer who drew that first boat.
Origins and ownership
Mylius Yachts traces its founding to the early 2000s. Alberto Simeone's own account of his career places the shipyard's founding at 2002, with himself installed as Technical Staff Director overseeing the entire design and build process; other accounts date a shared venture between Simeone, Mario Sassi and Mauro Montefusco -- who came from Naples and Gaeta respectively -- to 2003. Whichever year marks the true start, the public debut isn't in dispute: the partners built and launched their first boat, the 11E25, in Fiumicino, racing to present it at the 2004 Genoa Boat Show. Roles split along lines that held afterward -- Simeone led the Design Team, Sassi ran Marketing, Montefusco managed the Production Team -- and Simeone traced his own design lineage further back, to his father Mino Simeone's Neapolitan naval-architecture studio, known for the Minaldo Half and Quarter Ton designs and for Cuordileone, a boat Il Giornale della Vela called a revelation at the 1980 One Ton Cup in Naples.
Ownership changed at the end of 2011, when Twinpack Group -- a global packaging-industry leader led by Luciano Gandini, whose own company, Twin Pack, turns over roughly 35 million euros a year -- acquired a 51 percent stake in Mylius S.R.L. Gandini's relationship with the yard had begun years earlier as a customer: he bought a 48-footer, then a 65-footer that won an ADI award for sailing yachts under 24 meters, before becoming a shipyard partner. His daughter, Valentina Gandini, joined Mylius in 2012 and became its managing director in January 2021. Simeone, for his part, sold his shares in the yard in 2020 -- while keeping a technical-support role in the design of its product lines -- and relaunched his own independent practice, Alberto Simeone YD&E.
The designers
Design at Mylius has stayed close to its founder. In an October 2025 interview with Il Giornale della Vela, Simeone said no sailing Mylius had ever launched without his design signature, even after he sold his ownership stake. By January 2025, though, the yard's owner named two designers rather than one: Alberto Simeone and Giovanni Ceccarelli. Interiors are handled separately, by architect and interior designer Ugo Caragnano working with the shipyard's in-house technical office. Simeone's design reputation shows up on the water, too: sailed by Vittorio Biscarini, the Simeone-designed Mylius 50 Ars Una rounded Fastnet Rock first on handicap in the 2017 Rolex Fastnet Race, ahead of a fleet of more than 300 yachts, coming close to the overall win.
Construction through the eras
Mylius builds in two stages: hulls are laminated in Poland, then shipped to the yard's Podenzano plant in Emilia-Romagna for customization and fit-out. That plant dates to 2012, the yard's first home after the Twinpack investment; a larger successor, inaugurated in March 2015, spans more than 17,000 square meters across six production buildings, two office buildings, and a heliport. By March 2017, the yard counted 22 completed Mylius yachts, a production capacity of four boats a year, and orders booked through 2018. In a January 2025 interview, the yard described plans for a line of "superfast" boats built from pre-preg carbon fiber in-house at Podenzano.
Lines and generations
The lineup grew by size before it grew by name. In the yard's first four years, Mylius launched thirteen boats -- five 37-footers and eight 48-footers -- and never built below 50 feet again. From 2014, the range was completed with a 65-footer and a 76-footer. In an October 2025 interview, Simeone credited Luciano Gandini with driving the yard's expansion toward the 80-foot range, of which four had launched by then, and said Mylius had also delivered 26 Mini Maxis -- boats between 60 and 65 feet -- over about fifteen years, the most recent that May, as owners of smaller Mylius models traded up into the larger range. In a January 2025 interview, Valentina Gandini described a 72-footer under construction and awaiting a buyer, two 66-footers due to launch that summer, and a 60-footer designed by Ceccarelli due that fall, while ruling out building beyond 100 feet as outside the yard's market.
Who Mylius is for
Mylius suits buyers drawn to a small, design-led Italian yard rather than a high-volume production brand -- one where the person who launched the first hull in 2004 has had a hand in nearly every sailing model since, working alongside a single family of owners whose capital, not a corporate parent, has funded the yard's growth from 37-footers to an 80-foot range it has chosen, deliberately, not to outgrow.