NAPA software is built on years of dedication and development work. In 1976, the systems for naval architectural tasks used at Wärtsilä shipyards (known later as Kværner Masa-Yards, Aker Yards and today as STX Europe Ltd) in Finland were considered to be outdated and in need of replacement; the in-house systems then being applied had been in use since the mid-sixties.

The Wärtsilä shipyards set certain requirements for the new system. Firstly, the system had to be capable of modelling and accurately analysing any type of ship. The system also had to be:

• Product-model oriented.
• An efficient tool for project design analysis, not merely for final delivery documents.
• Easy to convert for use in new computers.

Secondly, the system had to have:

• A modular program structure, for maintenance reasons.
• Application-independent functions for data management, geometric operations, graphics, input and output, etc.
• Dynamic input and output formats.

A survey of the existing systems on the market showed none of them met these demands. Wärtsilä therefore decided to develop NAPA - the Naval Architectural PAckage.

As is generally known, it is very expensive to develop and maintain large computer systems, especially if the systems contain over a million lines of code, as NAPA does. Therefore, an additional feature was added to the list of requirements: It must be possible to sell the system to other companies as well. 

Development of NAPA was originally conducted by a group of engineers and naval architects in the ship design office of the Wärtsilä shipyard in Helsinki. The NAPA system was put to regular use at the Wärtsilä shipyards in 1982. Two years later, the system was delivered to the first outside customers.

In 1987, the development group was organized as the NAPA Business Unit of the Wärtsilä-owned information technology company Witec Oy. In 1989, this business unit became an independent company, Napa Oy (Ltd) through management buyout.

"From the very beginning, we have strived to establish an international client base. Towards the end of the 1990s most leading European shipyards, classification societies and consultancies had already taken NAPA into use. The turn of the millennium marked a significant breakthrough on Southeast Asian markets, resulting in an abundance of new clients especially in China, Japan and Korea", says Matti Salo President of Napa Group.