credit: Grain de Sail

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Grain de Sail website
To visit the boat in New York, it’s here

When you’re Breton, you look in the face and see New York ”, comments Jacques Barreau. The Morlaisien is at the origin, with his twin brother Olivier, of the extraordinary Grain de Sail adventure, an initiative which aims to revive the transport of goods by sail between the two shores of the Atlantic. Departing from Brittany on November 18, the first sailboat to make the crossing is due to arrive at the Brooklyn Navy Yard on Monday December 14, loaded with 14,500 bottles of organic French wines for New York wine merchants and restaurateurs. It had been since the 1950s that a cargo ship had not been launched. “It was difficult to convey this atypical project, but once people saw the boat, they understood“, Explains Jacques Barreau, Managing Director of Grain de Sail – Olivier Barreau is the majority shareholder.

Grain de Sail was imagined in 2010, when the two brothers, descendants of shipowners, who were working on a project related to renewable maritime energies, became interested “the possibility of decarbonising maritime transport ”. “We quickly arrived at sailboat-cargo type solutions, remembers Jacques Barreau. We weren’t interested in operating old rigs. We wanted to give a facelift to this environment“. Building sailboats, of course, but what to put in them? They stop at cocoa and coffee – “pleasure-oriented products“. Grain de Sail therefore began producing its coffee in 2013 in Morlaix, followed by chocolate in 2016. “We started from zero. We didn’t know anything ”, slips the entrepreneur.

Available in several hundred points of sale in the French West, Grain de Sail coffees and chocolates have met with significant success, allowing the Breton SME to finance, in 2018, the construction of its first sailboat, a two-masted ship. of 22 meters designed to transport 50 tons of goods with a minimal carbon footprint (its engine is only used for maneuvering in ports). Inaugurated in October in Lorient, the ship must unload its bottles of wine in New York before reaching the Dominican Republic, where it must fill up with 33 tonnes of cocoa in particular. This will then be transported to Morlaix to be transformed into chocolate. “We wanted to avoid positioning ourselves as a simple transporter. We also wanted to be product processors. This allows us to not be dependent on a client“, Continues Jacques Barreau.

The stopover in New York was part of the project “from the start”. “The coffees and cocoa we were interested in were in Latin America. We had to cross the Atlantic. The deckchair is a very strong symbol“. The sailboat, christened Grain de Sail, will remain in New York for “ten days”And will be able to accommodate, by reservation, small groups of visitors in compliance with health restrictions. Grain de Sel will complete two transatlantic rotations per year. This first ship will be joined by other sailboats, which still have to be built, to constitute a real fleet carrying spices, cocoa beans and other raw materials. “In the next ten years, we would like to develop roasting, coupled with ships, on European territory and the East Coast of the United States., indicates Jacques Barreau. We are overtaken by the environmental disaster. We are trying to show that another way is possible. It will not only pass the sail. It will also be necessary to rely on hydrogen engines and other low-carbon solutions“.

Learn more

Grain de Sail website
To visit the boat in New York, it’s here

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