In Lorient, Bretagne Sailing Valley keeps on developing

With the inauguration of the new building of the TR Racing team at La Base at the end of April, the announcement of a partnership between Lorient Agglomération and K-Challenge at the beginning of May, in recent weeks Lorient has reaffirmed its status as a major center for competitive sailing in France and indeed the world. And these are new actors coming in who look set to add to the dynamic development. Explanations…

On Thursday April 25, a few days before the start of The Transat CIC, Lorient La Base was the scene of the inauguration of the brand new building of TR Racing, the company co-founded by Thomas Ruyant and Alexandre Fayeulle, the president of Advens. Thus building with a floor space of 1,200 m2 is intended to be “a tool which reflects the ambitions of the team”, according to Thomas Gavériaux, CEO of TRR. 

For the offshore racing team, which today employs 32 people, there was never a question of choosing a location other than Lorient: “For us, it was Lorient and nowhere else,” confirms Thomas Gavériaux. “Firstly because there are a large number of offshore racing companies based here, in particular our main suppliers, but then also because there is a particular upbeat dynamic centred around the economy of professional sailing that makes it a unique place in the world, and also because you can easily go out training offshore with an access to the sea that few locations offer.”

After starting at the end of November 2022, the work was completed at the start of this year – for an investment of “almost 4 million euros”, according to the CEO of TRR. And the end result is a building which houses the two Imocas of Thomas Ruyant and Sam Goodchild, the company’s offices, a reception area and a platform which TRR plan to open up to “collaborative innovations”. 

Gavériaux specifies: “We are looking to host companies from the world of tech and data, to have them collaborate together and with us, in a proof of concept mode, on products and services from around the maritime world of tomorrow.”

This approach focused on collaborative innovation can also be found in the project formalized on May 7: the partnership between Lorient Agglomération and K-Challenge, which, at the beginning of 2025, will be established in the Péristyle district. 

The company, co-founded from the concept of sports tech by Stephan Kandler and Bruno Dubois, actually includes two entities: K-Challenge Racing for the sporting part – which gave birth to the French challenge Orient Express Racing Team – and K-Challenge Lab, focused more on R&D. 

This latter includes engineers, currently working on the Cup, software and platforms which comprise the three boats of the challenge – AC75, AC40 and hydrogen chase-boat – and aims to apply these assets and learnings to other projects, in competitive sailing, digital technology and maritime mobility.

At the time of the partnership announcement, Kandler cited in particular “hydrogen boats of 10 to 30 meters for pleasure in the broad sense, or, a little larger, for industrial purposes”, and explained that the future site of K-Challenge in Lorient – which was in competition with French cities around the Mediterranean – could also open up to other entities. 

“Bretagne Sailing Valley, with its industrial strength in the field of competitive sailing and technology, fitted completely with the framework of what we wanted”, Kandler explains, hoping that in the future, K-Challenge Lab will welcome “around 30 to 60 people for a turnover of a few million euros”.

For Audélor, the town planning, economic development and technopole agency of the Pays de Lorient, seeing TRR strengthen its presence and K-Challenge settling in Lorient in 2025 is definitely good news and reinforces the growing importance of competitive sailing to the local economy, the evolution of which has been the subject of a study carried out by the agency. 

“Not only do these projects support economic activity, with jobs created, skills and the use of local subcontractors and port equipment, but in addition, they have long-term visibility,” confirms Régis Guyon who is in charge of the sector of innovation in materials and boating. “This helps to reassure the local authorities when they embark on major investments to support these projects.”

If Lorient is very much at the forefront in this arena – but is also close to saturation level- several other Breton cities increasingly see competitive sailing – and applications in other maritime worlds – as a source of economic development. This is particularly the case for Port La Forêt and Concarneau, which for example is home to the mission-driven company MerConcept, while Saint-Malo at its maritime forum on May 22 underlined its intention to develop a real hub of offshore racing, as needed by teams, particularly Ocean Fifty for a few years now. And so there is proof that the famous Bretagne Sailing Valley can have a very positive influence well beyond the Lorient area.