French company to build second wind-powered vessel

Brittany-based chocolate manufacturer, Grain de Sail, has ordered a second schooner-type sailing vessel to ship the raw materials needed for its French factories – cacao, green coffee, and rums. The ship’s hull will be built at Piriou in Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam. Lorient-based Lorima will provide and install the rigging.

The 52m-long Grain de Sail 2, designed in collaboration with naval architecture firm L20naval and with a payload of about 350 tonnes, will be about twice the size of the existing Grain de Sail 1, commissioned in 2020, and is scheduled for delivery before the end of 2023. The existing 24m-long vessel, with a payload of about 50 tonnes, currently transports about 55% of the company’s raw material requirements from South America, and exports fine wines and other products from France to the United States. The new, larger vessel will enable the carbon-free supply of all ingredients necessary for the company’s production facilities and free up the Grain de Sail 1 to be redeployed on other carbon-free coastal shipments within Europe.

The cost of the new ship has not been revealed but Grain de Sail stated that it would be less than EUR 10 million. Jacques Barreau, co-founder and managing director of Grain de Sail, said: “We are pleased to enter the construction phase with two experts from Brittany such as Piriou and Lorima. We have already learned so much with out first cargo sailboat and now has come the time for Grain de Sail to prove that carbon-free maritime transportation can work on a larger scale.”

Finance for the new vessel has been arranged by Fimar and provided by Caisse d’Épargne Bretagne / Pays de Loire. Bpifrance and Crédit Mutuel Equity are also involved through their recent equity investment in the Grain de Sail Group.