Brand

Axopar

Axopar Boats was founded in Finland in 2014 by Sakari Mattila and Jan-Erik Viitala, with partners drawn from three earlier Finnish yards the same group had built up - Aquador, Paragon Yachts and XO Boats - a lineage the company set out in its first press release in September 2013, and from which the name is generally explained as an amalgam. The first boat, the Axopar 28, premiered at the Helsinki International Boat Show in February 2014 and defined the formula the yard has followed since. Mattila stepped back from operational and board roles across 2016 and 2017 and had divested his holding by 2018, later founding Saxdor Yachts; Jan-Erik Viitala remains a founding partner and the company's creative and innovation director. Axopar builds hand-laminated GRP outboard-powered adventure boats - day boats and weekenders rather than traditional cruisers - currently spanning roughly 22 to 45 feet. The defining engineering feature is a twin-stepped deep-V hull with a sharp entry and wide spray-deflecting chines, developed by naval architect Jarkko Jamsen and his Navia Design team, who have led the design of every Axopar since 2014. The steps introduce air beneath the running surface to cut drag, which is what lets the boats combine high cruising speeds with unusually low fuel consumption for their size. Every model is offered in several deck configurations on a common hull - Sun Top, Cross Top, Cross Cabin, Spyder - a modular approach that serves very different buyers from one set of tooling. Design and product development are Finnish; manufacturing is not. The boats are built in Poland, at facilities in Slupsk and Augustow, and in June 2024 the group took a majority shareholding in its largest Polish contract manufacturer, Markos Sp. z o.o. of Slupsk, through a new subsidiary, AX Composites. The company also holds a minority stake in the Norwegian electric-outboard maker Evoy, whose motors power the AX/E 22 and AX/E 25, the two models of Axopar's all-electric sub-brand launched to mark its tenth year. Since 2017 Axopar has also partnered with the German tuning house BRABUS to create BRABUS Marine, in which Axopar supplies the hull and boatbuilding and BRABUS adds performance calibration, carbon-fibre parts, leather interiors and its signature dark-on-dark styling. The first result was the BRABUS Shadow 800, a limited series of twenty boats built on the first-generation Axopar 37 platform and premiered at boot Dusseldorf in January 2018. Commercially Axopar became one of the fastest-growing brands in European boating and the largest Finnish boatbuilder by revenue, reporting more than 7,500 boats delivered in just over a decade through a network of dealers in more than 50 countries, with North America its largest single market.