Nantes (AFP)

The sail freighter "Grain de Sail" arrived in Nantes on Wednesday after completing its first transatlantic dedicated to the transport of goods.

Departing from Saint-Malo on November 18, the sailboat belongs to "Grain de sail", a chocolate production and coffee roasting company based in Morlaix (Finistère).

"This first crossing was an exercise to demonstrate that more environmentally friendly maritime transport is possible," the captain of the boat, Loïc Briand, general manager of Grain de Sail Shippping, told an AFP correspondent.

"Sailing can be a great alternative for transporting products with high added value", he said.

"Our boat holds the sea well. We made peaks at 22 knots (40 km / h) and passed waves of 15 meters without any difficulty".

This 24-meter-long boat, capable of carrying 50 tons of goods, left loaded with 15,000 bottles of French organic wine for wine merchants and restaurateurs in New York.

He then left to recover 33 tonnes of organic cocoa mass in the Dominican Republic.

Once disembarked in the coming days at the port of Saint-Nazaire, where the boat was unable to dock Wednesday due to a strike, this raw material will be transported by truck to Morlaix where it will be transformed into chocolate bars. .

A second transatlantic is already scheduled for next April.

The company plans to bring back two tons of coffee in addition to chocolate (36 tons) which represents 90% of its turnover (5 million euros in 2020).

Founded in 2013, the company employs 36 people.

She works with an association employing 15 disabled workers and 5 supervisors.

In 2018, she chose to have her own boat built to ensure her supplies.

It already plans to build in 2022 a second freighter with sails 50 meters long, able to carry 250 tons of goods.

After the opening of a new factory in Morlaix next June, it plans to build a new chocolate factory in Dunkirk (North) in early 2022 and gradually increase its fleet of sailing freighters to three ships within five years.

In the region of Nantes and Saint-Nazaire, maritime transport by sail is on the rise.

The Nantes-Saint-Nazaire Développement agency recalls that this transport constitutes a "target sector" of the territory.

It indicates that the company Airseas (spin-off of Airbus) will thus build in Nantes "a giant wing capable of towing commercial vessels to save fuel by 20%" (SeaWing).

The Nantes-based company Neoline is in the process of designing two ro-ro sailing freighters 136 meters long "with a view to opening a test line" between Saint-Nazaire and Baltimore, in the United States.

The company Zéphyr & Borée, born in Nantes, for its part intends to launch by 2022 a velic propulsion system making it possible to reduce the CO2 emissions of ships by 20 to 50%.

Finally, Chantiers de l'Atlantique announced on Tuesday February 15 the development of the rigid sail "Solid Sail", capable, according to its promoters, of reducing by 50% the gas emissions of a liner.

© 2021 AFP