Banque Populaire announced on Monday the launch of a new Ultim for 2029, designed by Antoine Koch’s AKO and built at CDK. Sailorz tells you more about the decision made by the sponsor and the future trimaran for Armel Le Cléac’h.
A year after launching a new Imoca for Loïs Berrehar with a view to the 2028 Vendée Globe, Banque Populaire formalized on Monday the construction of the future Maxi Banque Populaire 15, the result, according to Armel Le Cléac’h, of a long-term reflection: “With the leaders of Banque Populaire, we often have the opportunity to discuss the long term. At a certain point, the question arose about the future of our Ultim Banque Populaire XI (VPLP design, launched in April 2021); we wondered at what point it might become less competitive compared to the competition, the perspective was around 2030, 2032 or 2034.”
One element then accelerated the reflection: the announcement of the launch of Gitana 18 by the Gitana Team. “In any case, it allowed us to have a slightly clearer timing, in the sense that we told ourselves that if we wanted to be present on the 2030 Route du Rhum with a boat capable of competing with Gitana 18, we probably had to go with a new boat,” the skipper continues. “We know that BP XI will still be very high-performing in the next two to three years, but we also know that we are reaching a bit of a glass ceiling: if we want to optimize her significantly, we have to make very major structural modifications.”
Director of Team Banque Populaire, Erwan Steff adds: “We risked finding ourselves at the load limit everywhere, on the platform, the beams, the floats, so it would have been a long, costly, and uncertain shipyard project. We were all a bit marked by the evolutions on certain boats that were more or less successful. We therefore preferred to start again from a blank page with today’s state of the art.” For Armel Le Cléac’h, “this isn’t a whim of the type ‘the others have a new boat, we want one too,’ it’s in the DNA of the Banque Populaire project to be at the start of the major races with, always, boats capable of winning.”
A unanimous decision
Concretely, Team Banque Populaire began working on the subject in the summer of 2025, with the objective, according to the skipper, of “building a case so that the sponsor has all the elements: cost, timing, stakes, race program.” Erwan Steff adds: “We then began to discuss more officially with the different levels of decision-making at Banque Populaire: the sports commission, the finance commission, then the board of directors of the Bateau Banque Populaire company, to whom we presented the project upon the arrival of the Café L’Or in Martinique. They gave a favorable opinion, subject to an agreement from the two Banque Populaire colleges, the general managers and the presidents, who gave their unanimous go on December 18.”
“The decision was unanimous at our governance level,” confirms Pierre-Laurent Berne, development director of the Banques Populaires. “I have a fairly simple phrase to summarize our commitment: shipowner, competitor, winner. Given what we see from the competition, we want to continue to have a high-performance boat because we have a team and skippers who are as well; it seems essential to us to have all the ingredients to aim for victory.”
Will this new Ultim require an additional budgetary effort from the sponsor? “No. When we commit to the long term as we do—the launch of Banque Populaire 15 will coincide with the 40th anniversary of our involvement in sailing—the notion of a short-term budget makes little sense. Our annual budget, which includes sailing and surfing, is around 8 million euros per year; it allows us to approach the construction of an Imoca and an Ultim calmly, without having to increase it. We also hope to sell our current boat well.” At what price? “It won’t be much more expensive than a new last-generation Imoca [between 8 and 10 million euros, Editor’s note] for a high-performance Ultim available turnkey after the Arkea Ultim Challenge (first quarter of 2028),” answers Armel Le Cléac’h.
A complete design team
Team Banque Populaire isn’t there yet, having already started working on its future Ultim last summer, consulting three architectural firms: Guillaume Verdier, a solution quickly ruled out by the latter, designer of Gitana 18 – “he told us it was going to be complicated to meet our request,” indicates Armel Le Cléac’h –, AKO (Antoine Koch Océan), and VPLP. These last two were tasked with presenting a preliminary project to a commission composed of the skipper, Erwan Steff, Sébastien Josse (sports director), Pierre-Emmanuel Hérissé (technical director), Maël Devoldere and Clément Durrafourg (design office), which was done in December.
“After reviewing them each once, we confirmed the choice of AKO in January; it was one of the hardest decisions we’ve had to make in the last two or three years, because both projects were extremely well put together,” comments Erwan Steff. What made the difference in favor of Antoine Koch’s design team? “Partly the fact that they rely on a team of specialists from different worlds, responds Armel Le Cléac’h. Also Antoine’s sailor side, who doesn’t necessarily have as much Ultim experience as VPLP—even if he participated in the entire design of Gitana 17—but has sailed a lot.”
Antoine Koch, naturally satisfied to have been chosen—“An Ultim is truly the project of a lifetime in terms of naval architecture”—will be surrounded within AKO by Armand de Jacquelot (project management and 3D design) and Thomas Dalmas (appendage design and VPP), the trio being accompanied by “our two guest stars,” Bobby Kleinschmidt (Team New Zealand), who will focus on hulls and aero concepts, and Guénolé Bernard (ex-Luna Rossa), “an experienced designer highly sought after for the Cup, who will notably handle all the boat’s adjustment systems.” This design team will likely be completed by Félix de Navacelle, a regular AKO collaborator, while Antoine Koch adds: “We are also continuing our collaboration on structure with GSea Design, but also with Finot-Conq for CFD calculations; David de Prémorel (CEO of Finot-Conq) will also personally have a major role in the 3D design with Armand.”
A global approach
The design work truly began in January, notably with a return delivery trip of Banque Populaire XI from Guadeloupe for the architect. In what directions does he plan to go to design this future BP 15? “It’s really a global approach,” he explains. “To address the major issue with these boats, which fail to realize their full potential downwind in heavy seas, we need to achieve better integration between the hydro, the platform, and the rig; the goal is for everything to work better together. Traditionally, we only optimized the structure to try to make it as light as possible, and on top of that, we put appendages and a mast. Here, we’re going to focus more on the interactions between appendages/platform and platform/rig, which should produce significant gains. Gitana 18 is a good example of global integration of the boat; that’s likely where it has progressed the most compared to G17.”
The priority for the AKO team today is to work on the platform, for which the final plans will be delivered at the end of the year, for a scheduled start of laminating in January 2027 and a build that will last two years at CDK, in Lorient. “We consulted other shipyards,” confides Erwan Steff, “we chose CDK for proximity, the autoclave, and our history: we’ve been building our boats with them for years; we have a real ease of dialogue. And since they built Gitana 18, they clearly see all the stakes of a latest-generation Ultim.”
Armel Le Cléac’h will take possession of BP 15 in the spring of 2029—he will then be 52 years old—with notably the 2030 Route du Rhum and the 2032 Arkéa Ultim Challenge in his sights. “When I see Thomas (Coville) who just did a Jules Verne at 57 and is going again for the Rhum, or Charles who won the Arkea at 50, I tell myself that 52 isn’t that old. And you need enormous experience to handle these boats,” he smiles.
Image : Pierre Bouras
