Fire destroys Maxi Dolphin's shed in Italy and consumes three boats under construction

A major fire destroyed the production shed of Maxi Dolphin on Monday night, 24 August, in Erbusco, in the Franciacorta area of Brescia province, northern Italy. The yard is one of the recognised names in carbon construction in Europe.

The alarm was raised at around 10 pm. Drivers on the nearby Milan to Venice motorway saw the column of black smoke and called it in. The flames rose more than ten metres and were visible for kilometres.

The operation

Italy's national fire service deployed crews from the Brescia command, reinforced from Bergamo and Mantova, for a total of 50 personnel and 13 vehicles.

According to the fire service's official account, the work lasted all night with two priorities: containing the blaze and stopping it spreading to a neighbouring industrial site. The shed's roof collapsed during the operation. Once the flames were under control, damping down and making the structure safe began.

ARPA Lombardia, the regional environmental agency, monitored air quality throughout. The concern has a specific technical basis: burning resin and composite fibre releases compounds that require measurement, and that is what separates a fire at a composite yard from an ordinary industrial fire.

Nobody was injured. The cause is under investigation by fire service and police experts.

What was lost

Beyond the structure, three boats under construction were destroyed: an MD80, an MD75 and an MD51 Power.

The MD80 is the most sensitive case from a contractual point of view. The sailing yacht was due to leave for Marina di Ravenna at the end of September. It is a high-performance design, with a lifting keel varying draft between 5 and 3.1 metres and twin rudders, conceived to combine cruising and racing.

What Maxi Dolphin represents

The company was founded in 1987 by Vittorio Moretti and built, across almost four decades, a specific reputation: bespoke sailing and motor yachts in carbon composite, up to around 36 metres. Since 2016 the brand has belonged to MD Technologies, with the operation run by Luca Botter, involved with the business since its founding, and technical direction by Giovanni Pizzati.

What gives the loss its dimension is the list of studios whose designs were built there. Maxi Dolphin has produced hulls drawn by Germán Frers, Bruce Farr, Mark Mills, Luca Brenta, Bill Tripp, Finot-Conq and Roberto Starkel. The MD75 Karma, by Mark Mills, was named best sailing yacht of 2020.

And here is the point that straight news coverage tends to leave out. The Erbusco shed had around 2,700 square metres under cover and, inside it, a 40-metre composite oven.

Equipment of that size cannot be bought off the shelf. It is the piece that allows entire structural sections of a carbon hull to be cured in a single operation, and it is precisely what separates a yard able to build custom in carbon from one that subcontracts lamination. Add the moulds, jigs and tooling accumulated over decades, and it becomes clear why a fire at a composite yard is more serious than the value of the burnt boats suggests.

The restart

The company's management reacted the same day. In a statement to the Italian press, Luca Botter said the fire had halted production and brought immense pain, but that the company restarts immediately at another site, keeping both the sailing and motor lines.

It is a signal that matters to the sector. Orders for custom carbon boats involve long lead times, deposits and racing calendars, and a quick decision on continuity of production is what holds contracts together.

The incident in numbers