TEvery four years, the Vendée Globe race is an opportunity to discover and highlight the feats achieved by French companies specializing in the equipment and design of Imoca class boats. There are a certain number of them in the Charente-Maritime department and particularly in the La Rochelle basin.
Among them, the C3 Technologies factory, based in Périgny and specialized in the manufacture of composite material for racing boats, requested to equip no more and no less than 15 boats out of the 40 for the 2024 edition. “We worked on the boats of teams located at the top of the basket, such as those of Jérémie Beyou (Charal), Thomas Ruyant (Vulnerable), Yannick Bestaven (Maître Coq) or even Charlie Dalin (Macif),” says Pierre-Alexis Michel, project manager at this company founded in 2008.
The company C3 Technologies has designed parts for prestigious Vendée GLobe boats.
Jean-Christophe Sounalet / SO
Foils and rudders
The specificity of this factory, which employs 25 employees, is to work with the high-performance composite material of carbon, due to its “incredible and almost unrivaled mechanical characteristics”, according to the specialist. “Today, a racing boat is made almost entirely from this material. » More concretely, each year C3 Technologies creates tens of tonnes of high-tech parts for boats such as keels, foils, rudders and daggerboards. These cutting-edge and often expensive parts – around 500,000 euros for example for a pair of foils – are requested by the different teams of skippers as part of their project.
Jean-Christophe Sounalet / SO
The C3 Technologies design office, in Périgny.
The Charal boat of skipper Jérémie Beyou, among the most robust in the race, is the one on which the company located near La Rochelle has worked the most between 2020 and 2024. The confidential preparation and manufacturing of the rudders or even the pair of foils required a lot of precision, meticulousness and therefore time. “Charal is a team that always pushes the development sliders quite far. We work hard but when there is the reward of a boat going well, it's a good thing. Our job is rewarding,” continues the project manager.
The Charente-Maritime company rode the Vendée Globe wave and had a great year in 2024 with a turnover of 2.5 million euros. She can look forward to the future with peace of mind, always remaining vigilant on the ecological side. “We use carbon fiber, it’s not harmless from an environmental point of view, but we don’t make disposable boats and parts. There are things to do to improve and we are working on them. »
Hydroem hydraulic cylinders on Imoca
Pierre Barboteau
The Hydroem company, based in Lagord, has been collaborating for many years with the sailing teams competing in the Vendée Globe.
Developing and adapting is also what the Hydroem company, located in Lagord, near La Rochelle, does. The factory specializing in marine and industrial hydraulics has been working for many years with the sailing teams competing in the Vendée Globe. It is known in the boating and ocean racing world for manufacturing hydraulic cylinders and equipped 15 Imoca's lined up at the start of the race this Sunday, November 10, with this tool.
“We checked the installations during the first week of the Vendée Globe and we visited the boats to see if everything was working before departure. We carry out annual maintenance on almost the entire fleet, i.e. 38 boats out of 40. It’s a source of pride,” rejoices Michel Farré, president and CEO of this company with around ten employees.
Pierre Barboteau
Michel Farré, President and CEO of Hydroem, presents an example of a hydraulic cylinder manufactured in Lagord.
After being selected in a call for tenders launched in 2014, the Hydroem group is today the exclusive supplier of the Imoca class in terms of keel hydraulics, keel sail and mast. “Today, all our work is done in our workshop,” continues the CEO. The good economic health of the Lagordaise company, with a turnover estimated at 2.1 million euros in 2024, allows it to look a little further ahead, to the horizon of the 2028 Vendée Globe.
And Michel Farré concludes: “We already have four new boats on which we will be able to work for 2028, in particular the next boat from the DMG Mori team. [ce bateau Imoca est aujourd’hui skippé par le Japonais Kōjirō Shiraishi, présent au départ de la course ce dimanche, NDLR]. If we have ten in total that will be good, we will try to adapt according to demand. We are currently looking for new profiles to join the machining workshop. We are changing things to continue our development. »
