A sail-powered French cargo shipping company, Grain de Sail is poised to launch an English Channel service early next year.

The Brittany-based group, founded in Morlaix in 2010, has activities spanning in wine, chocolate and coffee processing, maritime transport, import and export services and freight forwarding.

Grain de Sail will operate the 24-metre Grain de Sail (GDS) 1 with a capacity for 26 pallets on a route connecting France and Britain using the ports of St-Malo and Southampton. Passage times between the ports in Brittany and Hampshire will take between one and two days.

The company have plans to initially operate the route based on a single round trip a week. They are also to increase sailing frequencies by adding more cargo ships, Grain de Sail marketing director Stefan Gallard told The Loadstar.

“We’ll be carrying French goods, providing an LCL service by the pallet, and will be loading UK products on the return trip to France. With our pure sailing vessel we can exceed 90% carbon reduction. Future routes within UK and Ireland, as well as within Europe, are also under study".

More on the story here on the company that have added a newbuild, Grain de Sail II, which Afloat adds is custom-built and designed by French naval architect/builders, Piriou (see, unrelated Scilly story).

Afloat tracked the second much larger 238 pallet capacity cargo sailboat, which last week completed its delivery voyage to Saint Malo, its homeport. The newbuild is to operate on their existing St. Malo-New York, USA route.

The ethos of Grain de Sail is to couple sustainable seafaring and great organic gastronomic products. By selecting only products organically farmed and transporting them by cargo sailboat, the company try to have the lowest carbon footprint possible.

Since 2020, Grain de Sail have operated trans-Atlantic cargo-carrying voyages between Europe and the America’s, this has involved cargoes of organic and biodynamic French wines to New York City. Afterwards, it's down to Central America to load up on organic coffee and cocoa beans before returning home to Brittany, where Grain de Sail roasts the coffee and produces chocolates.

The round trips take around 3 months to complete and occur twice a year, in the Spring and in the Autumn.