How did your coffee get into your cup? And you phone? Almost everything you consume is transported by ship, or rather by container ship. These 80,000 merchant ships crisscross the planet to transport food and objects we use every day. Together, they account for 3% of global Co2 emissions, with devastating effects on our health and marine biodiversity.
For over 10 years, a Breton company has been tackling the massive pollution generated by maritime transport. How do they do it? By using sail-powered cargo ships for the first time, which reduce Co2 emissions by 90% compared with conventional container ships. We take you behind the scenes of the TOWT adventure, the company that wants to make sailing the future of maritime transport!
An entrepreneurial adventure as ambitious as it is dizzying
While all industries are promising to embrace decarbonization, the shipping industry is struggling to make the transition. However, several technical avenues are being explored to reduce the sector's emissions, and sailing is one of them. Already tested and approved by all sailors over the last millennia, it is considered a very serious solution for decarbonizing maritime transport. And Guillaume le Grand, co-founder and CEO of TOWT, was quick to understand this.
It all began in Brittany, where Guillaume's grandfather instilled in him a passion for sailing. After studying political science in Lyon, he began a career as an analyst in London, a long way from the Breton coast. But his passion for sailing caught up with him, and at the age of 24, with his City salary in his pocket, he joined forces with friends to buy a 15-meter sailboat. The challenge? To collect a 3-ton consignment of fair-trade coffee from the Dominican Republic and bring it back to England. A year later, mission accomplished. Packets of certified "fair trade and low-carbon" coffee are selling like hotcakes in the markets of London's upmarket districts.
Guillaume didn't stop there and embarked on the great TOWT adventure with two convictions:
- Shipping is not going to decarbonize, because no technological innovation is mature enough today to make this possible.
Shipping needs to be more transparent. Consumers need to know where their coffee comes from, how it was transported, by whom and under what conditions.
From there, the race for innovation to decarbonize shipping was on.
Bold choices to make the most of sailing
TOWT began by chartering existing sailing ships to transport batches of organic beer from England to France. The beers were sold in the Biocoop shops in the Finistère region, and quickly became a success. The number of transatlantic trips multiplied and the range of transported goods diversified. But for Guillaume, this was not enough. For some time, an idea had been gaining ground: "What if we scaled things up by building modern cargo sailboats?"
No sooner said than done, a call for tenders was issued in 2019 to some fifteen European shipyards. French shipbuilder Piriou won the tender, and construction began in 2020 in Romania on two cargo sailboats, named Artemis and Anemos. The ambition is strong: the two merchant sailboats will be the only ones to use over 90% wind propulsion, with a carrying capacity of 1,100 tons of cargo per sailboat. This is what makes TOWT so special, whereas most of its competitors operate on a hybrid model, combining wind power with a combustion engine. Companies such as Ayro, Airseas and Beyond the Sea offer to install new-generation sails on existing commercial vessels of all sizes. But these can only save 15 to 30% on fuel. These figures pale into insignificance beside the 90%+ reduction promised by Towt.
The choice of "almost" 100% velelic influences even the design of the boats, which have very fine lines and a much larger canvas surface area than other vessels on the market. On the technical side, TOWT innovates with masts that allow semi-automatic sail handling. They are also developing an autonomous routing system that defines the best sea route to take according to wind and weather conditions. Above all, the Breton company is ahead of the game. Artemis and Anemos will be launched in April 2024, while the cargo sailboats of similar players such as Windcoop and Neoline are still in the prototyping phase.
Low carbon yes, but with transparency and integrity
To be the first in this mad race for innovation, TOWT is constantly seeking to renew itself. "We almost died 250 times," Guillaume recounts, "but each time we got back up, carried along by ever-stronger values."
By choosing Towt, shippers (customers) are not only choosing a low-carbon mode of transport, but they are also adhering to a demanding environmental and social approach. Proof of this is the creation of the ANEMOS label, initiated by Towt, which enables consumers to identify products transported by sail. "Just like the Max Havelaar label for fair trade, or the AB label for organic farming, we think it's possible to develop a label for sail transport that will provide a high degree of traceability for the products transported", explains Guillaume le Grand.
With initial contracts signed with Pernod Ricard, Belco, Longueteau and Drappier champagnes, Towt has already secured orders worth 140 million euros... the future looks bright.
TOWT, the record-breaking fundraising
In 2021, over 2,000 of you invested in and believed in the TOWT project. It's partly thanks to you that the first two cargo ships will soon see the light of day, in February 2024. This fundraising campaign had already broken all records, with 4.5 million euros raised in just one month on the Belgian and French platform.
This time, TOWT is back on LITA.co to finance six more cargo ships, which will enable goods to be transported more frequently. Delivery scheduled for 2025. Come aboard the TOWT adventure!