Intermarine S.p.A.

Intermarine builds ships out of glass-reinforced plastic at Sarzana, on the Ligurian coast near La Spezia, and has done so since 1970. The monocoque composite hull is the reason navies come to it. A minehunter has to hold together under an underwater explosion while showing almost no magnetic signature, and a single-piece composite shell does both jobs at once. The company sits in the naval arm of IMMSI, the Italian holding that also controls the Piaggio scooter and vehicle group, alongside its real estate and industrial arms.

Minehunters are the core. Intermarine built twelve Lerici and Gaeta class ships for the Italian Navy between 1985 and 1996, four of the first class and eight of the second, then exported the design widely. The Osprey class went to the United States Navy at twelve hulls, the Huon class to Australia at six, the Katanpaa class to Finland at three, the Mahamiru class to Malaysia at four, the Lat Ya class to Thailand at two, with further ships to Nigeria and Algeria, where the El Kasseh class runs to three. A mid-life modernisation of the eight Gaeta class ships was worth around 176 million euros. South Korea fields an unlicensed derivative that Intermarine had no hand in. The current range is the new generation minehunter, offered as the IM-NGM 81 and the smaller IM-NGM 63, built for mine warfare and seabed surveillance and designed to work with unmanned vehicles rather than only with divers and towed gear. Intermarine and Leonardo signed a deal with Italy's Directorate of Naval Armaments worth 1.6 billion euros for five of them, and lamination of the first hull started at Sarzana in October 2025.

Fast patrol boats are the second line, built in composite or aluminium. Three models are offered. The IM-FPB 44-SF is the Cabrini class, the IM-FPB 33-SAR is the CP-420 class shaped around search and rescue, and the IM-FPB 58-WPC covers law enforcement and border control. The yard recently launched a search and rescue patrol boat for the Italian Coast Guard, which is the sort of customer these hulls are drawn for. Steel and aluminium construction came in after 2002, widening what the yard could take on beyond the composite work it had built its name on.

Fast ferries keep the commercial side alive. The IM-TMV 58 Aquastrada is an aluminium monohull 58.2 metres long, carrying 738 passengers across two decks at up to 40 knots with a range of 350 nautical miles, driven by two or four MTU diesels through steerable waterjets. Research and development runs across all three lines from an in-house department that works with Italian and international design firms, combining classical naval theory with finite element modelling, full three-dimensional models of hull and superstructure, scale prototypes and towing tank tests. Materials research is a standing part of that. For a builder whose main advantage is what its hulls are made of, that is where the next contract comes from.