bound4blue closes USD 44 million funding

Barcelona and Singapore-based bound4blue has secured USD 44 million in new investment to scale production of its suction sail propulsion systems for commercial shipping. Led by OCTAVE Capital and Katapult Ocean, the round also included Odfjell family office, Motion Ventures, and ReOcean Fund, and several existing investors.The funding will “expand capacity, accelerate our growth roadmap and advance new developments that will elevate both the technology and our services to the next level,” said CEO José Miguel Bermúdez.

Branded eSAILs, bound4blue’s suction sails use a rotor at the tip of each sail to generate a boundary layer of laminar flow, allowing a smaller, teardrop-shaped cross-section to generate the same lift as a much larger wing sail. Unlike a wind turbine, the sail can make use of wind power without the intermediate step of conversion into electricity, generating additional thrust and reducing the ship’s engine load, fuel consumption, and CO₂ emissions. The ro-ro vessel Ville de Bordeaux has recorded daily fuel reductions of as much as 5.4 tonnes, and meanwhile, Odfjell’s Bow Olympus achieved 15-20% average fuel savings on its first transatlantic voyage. bound4blue is targeting the so-called “retrofit decade”, when tens of thousands of existing vessels will require efficiency upgrades before 2030. Suction sails can be retrofitted on many current ship types, offering immediate reductions in fuel use and emissions. The company’s latest fund-raising exercise will fund parallel production lines in Spain and China.

“After years of looking for the right opportunity in this space, we were driven to invest in bound4blue as wind propulsion has clearly shifted from experimental concept to bankable decarbonisation tool,” said Jonas Skattum Svegaarden, Katapult Ocean’s CEO. “As the team scales into Asia and deepens partnerships with leading shipowners, we’re confident that their combination of technical performance, commercial traction, and global supply chain ambition will make bound4blue a cornerstone solution in the transition to a cleaner, more resilient ocean economy.”