Custom and series-production shipbuilder for luxury and professional vessels
Chantier Naval Couach is a French shipbuilder founded in 1897, designing and constructing hulls from 11 to 50 meters for luxury, surveillance, and military clients. The tech stack reflects a hybrid traditional-and-digital operation: CAD tools (CATIA, Rhino, AutoCAD) for design sit alongside manufacturing planning (SAP, Microsoft Project), robotics frameworks (ROS 2, Gazebo), and process-heavy quality methodologies (AMDEC/FMEA). Active hiring centers on engineering and manufacturing, with a focus on mid-level roles and a recent slowdown in new openings—typical of a production-constrained shipyard in a high-touch, long-cycle-time market.
Couach builds custom and semi-custom professional and luxury vessels, including patrol boats, military interceptors, and high-speed surveillance craft. Based in Gujan-Mestras in the Arcachon Bay region of southwestern France, the shipyard operates across design, construction, and after-sales services for an international client base. The company employs 201–500 people and combines hand-crafted composite construction (GRP hulls) with increasingly digital design workflows. Production is organized around sub-assembly tooling, electrical integration, and process standardization—reflected in active projects on manufacturing bills of materials, instruction sheet development, and electrical architecture 3D modeling. Operational challenges center on assembly-line optimization, process improvement, and supplier quality management.
CAD: CATIA, Rhino, AutoCAD. Manufacturing: SAP, Microsoft Project, Trello, Redmine. Robotics: ROS 2, Gazebo. Engineering: C++, Python, Git. Quality: AMDEC (FMEA methodology). Office: Microsoft Office, Excel.
201–500 employees. The company was founded in 1897 and is structured as a partnership. Primary operations are in Gujan-Mestras, Gironde, France.
Other companies in the same industry, closest in size