Apreamare - Sorrento gozzi since 1849

The story begins in 1849 in Sorrento, when Giovanni Aprea opened a workshop building rowing and sailing fishing boats in the local maritime tradition. Those hulls followed the Sorrento gozzo, a small working craft of the Gulf of Naples. For generations the Aprea family passed on the craft of master boatbuilders, long before the polyester era. The modern turning point came in 1988. Cataldo Aprea partnered with Sorrento entrepreneur Salvatore Pollio to form Apreamare S.r.l. Together they designed the Smeraldo 7, a fibreglass fishing gozzo balancing traditional form and new technology. Success was immediate. In 1990 the Smeraldo 9, shown at the Genoa Boat Show, was presented as the first planing-hull gozzo — a break that opened the type to fast pleasure use and Mediterranean day yachting. Through the 1990s and 2000s Apreamare built a range of gozzi and day cruisers instantly recognisable: full bow, often blue topsides, teak, and a prestige image tied to the Amalfi coast and Mediterranean harbours. The yard settled in Torre Annunziata, not far from its Sorrento roots. In 2018 Apreamare Yachts S.r.l. marked a new corporate phase; in 2020 the Gozzo 35 relaunched a contemporary Gozzo line, followed by larger models (Gozzo 42 and beyond) with designers such as Marco Casali / Too Design. Apreamare embodies “Mediterranean yachting culture”: less pure performance or charter volume than the elegance of a prestige day boat for coastal use and lifestyle. In Sardinia and Italian roads the brand enjoys a strong reputation; in Corsica the signal is still weaker (Tier 3 in the brief), but the positioning fits a Mediterranean prestige clientele. The yard’s narrative remains that of a Sorrento boatbuilding dynasty that moved into light-industrial luxury gozzi without breaking the formal link to the original fishing craft.