A Green Beginning - Sailing Ship to Transport Wine
by Peter Allen/Sail-World Cruising on 18 Mar 2008
Belem in action SW
Sail-World Cruising's Green Prize of the Month goes to Frenchman Frederic Albert, who has started using a 19th century sailing vessel to transport wine from Bordeaux to Dublin to reduce carbon emissions, and on the return journey the three masted barque will carry crushed glass.
This month 60,000 bottles from Languedoc will be shipped in the19th Century barque Belem, saving 18,375lb of carbon.
Belem, launched in 1896 and the last French merchant sailing vessel to be built, will sail into Dublin following a four day voyage from Bordeaux. The wines will be delivered to Bordeaux by barge using the Canal du Midi and Canal du Garonne, which run across southern France from Sète in the east, via Béziers in Languedoc. Each bottle - 60,000 in the first shipment - will be labelled: 'Carried by sailing ship, a better deal for the planet.' Although the whole process will take up to a week longer than a flight, it is estimated to save 4.9oz of carbon per bottle.
The 170ft Belem, which was first used to transport chocolate from South America and is named after the Brazilian port, is the first of seven planned to be working by 2013. Seven private investors have contributed 70 per cent of the business's start-up costs of £40m. Bank loans have provided the rest.
Frederic Albert, founder of the shipping company Compagnie de Transport Maritime à la Voile (CTMV), said: 'My idea was to do something for the planet and something for the wines of Languedoc. One of my grandfathers was a wine-maker and one was a sailor.' Albert said some 250 producers in Languedoc alone were keen to use his ships.
'There is a lot of interest in green investments in France,' said Albert. Ships will return to France with an equivalent tonnage of crushed glass for recycling into wine bottles at factories in Bordeaux and Béziers. Despite the time involved in transporting it, the wine should also remain relatively cheap, at between €7 and €20 a bottle.
Delivery times to Ireland and Britain had been calculated using historic charts. 'We had someone who studied a century of weather conditions to work them out,' he said.
Albert said his fleet would also be used for advertising in the ports they sailed to. He said: 'There will be tastings on board. The Belem can hold around 100 guests, so there will be plenty of room for importers to promote their wines.'
CTMVs second boat, which cost six million euros (8.4 million dollars) to build and is as yet unnamed, will also be launched in March this year. It will measure 52 metres and have 1,000 square metres of sails and a top speed of 14 knots.
With a total of seven ships the investment in the project looks set to be about 40 to 50 million euros. Albert would not confirm the exact investment figure, but said he now has seven private investors and the financing is 70 percent private capital and 30 percent bank loans.
'There is a lot of interest in green investments in France,' he said.
Future ports of call, with Bordeaux as the regular departure point, will include Bristol or Manchester in England, Gothenburg in Sweden, Copenhagen in Denmark, and other towns in Scandinavia.
The next delivery after Dublin, however, is Canada. 'The Canadians want us to come there in June,' said Albert, 'They have already ordered 20,000 bottles, but I think there will be more,'
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