2023-10-26 16:00:09
In the north of China, in the port of Lushun (the former Port Arthur), located on the edge of the Bohai Sea, three boats are being finished in the hangar of the company ODC Marine: a monohull of 18 meters which will transport a hundred tourists to the Arcachon basin, another monohull 12 meters long without a roof which will crisscross the canals of Sète, and a catamaran which does not yet have a home port, but whose brother jumeau delights Club Med customers in the Bahamas.
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With seventy employees and four to five boats produced each year, ODC (pronounced “odyssey”) Marine is a very small shipyard, especially on the scale of China. But it has two particularities: its boats are innovative in terms of ecology and its capital is still entirely owned by the three French people who created it.
The adventure began in 2006. Stéphane Gonnetand, a young engineer graduated from the French Institute of Advanced Mechanics (Clermont-Ferrand) and Centrale Paris, met Gildas Olivier (INSA graduate) in Dalian, where he worked for an SME. Rouen), as part of international corporate volunteering. In this China which is opening up to the world and where growth reaches 15% per year, the two young people decide to start from scratch a project that is close to their hearts: the construction of a boat. “We had no business plan. It was in fact a life project more than an entrepreneurial vision”says Mr. Gonnetand.
Limit environmental impact
“At the start, we were a low-cost company, but thanks to our suppliers, mainly Chinese, who moved upmarket, we are now a high-tech site”, explains Stéphane Gonnetand, dressed in shorts and a sky blue t-shirt, as if he were going to the beach. From employees’ commute to work to the use of the boat, including its manufacturing and delivery, everything has been designed to limit its impact on the environment – at least as much as possible for a company located 8,500 kilometers from its main market, in a country where two-thirds of electricity production comes from coal combustion. A reflection to which Jean-Marc Jancovici’s Carbone 4 firm contributed.
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The boats are made of aluminum, a less polluting material than plastic or wood, and the motors are either electric or hybrid, efficient in terms of autonomy thanks to components from its Chinese suppliers: CALB for the batteries and Glelec for the motors. electrical.
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