• Advertise
  • Contact Us
  • About Us
  • Supplier Directory
  • SCB YouTube
  • Login
  • Subscribe
  • Logout
  • My Profile
  • LOGISTICS
    • Air Cargo
    • All Logistics
    • Express/Small Shipments
    • Facility Location Planning
    • Freight Forwarding/Customs Brokerage
    • Global Gateways
    • Global Logistics
    • Last Mile Delivery
    • Logistics Outsourcing
    • LTL/Truckload Services
    • Ocean Transportation
    • Rail & Intermodal
    • Reverse Logistics
    • Service Parts Management
    • Transportation & Distribution
  • TECHNOLOGY
    • All Technology
    • Artificial Intelligence
    • Cloud & On-Demand Systems
    • Data Management (Big Data/IoT/Blockchain)
    • ERP & Enterprise Systems
    • Forecasting & Demand Planning
    • Global Trade Management
    • Inventory Planning/ Optimization
    • Product Lifecycle Management
    • Sales & Operations Planning
    • SC Finance & Revenue Management
    • SC Planning & Optimization
    • Sourcing/Procurement/SRM
    • Supply Chain Visibility
    • Transportation Management
  • GENERAL SCM
    • Business Strategy Alignment
    • Education & Professional Development
    • Global Supply Chain Management
    • Global Trade & Economics
    • HR & Labor Management
    • Quality & Metrics
    • Regulation & Compliance
    • SC Security & Risk Mgmt
    • Supply Chains in Crisis
    • Sustainability & Corporate Social Responsibility
  • WAREHOUSING
    • All Warehouse Services
    • Conveyors & Sortation
    • Lift Trucks & AGVs
    • Order Fulfillment
    • Packaging
    • RFID, Barcode, Mobility & Voice
    • Robotics
    • Warehouse Management Systems
  • INDUSTRIES
    • Aerospace & Defense
    • Apparel
    • Automotive
    • Chemicals & Energy
    • Consumer Packaged Goods
    • E-Commerce/Omni-Channel
    • Food & Beverage
    • Healthcare
    • High-Tech/Electronics
    • Industrial Manufacturing
    • Pharmaceutical/Biotech
    • Retail
  • THINK TANK
  • WEBINARS
    • On-Demand Webinars
    • Upcoming Webinars
    • Webinar Library
  • PODCASTS
  • VIDEOS
  • WHITEPAPERS
Home » Coffee Shipped by Sailboat Is the Whimsical Way These Companies Are Cutting Emissions

Coffee Shipped by Sailboat Is the Whimsical Way These Companies Are Cutting Emissions

coffee beans
Coffee beans from Colombia. Photo: Getty.
May 23, 2022
Bloomberg

There’s never been a more dreamy way to have your coffee delivered than a sailboat across the Atlantic.

A small number of specialty roasters in Europe are now offering beans that have been sailed — rather than shipped via fossil-fuel burning vessels — from South America. While they’re a rare luxury compared with standard bags of supermarket coffee, these wind-blown beans may inspire some imaginative ideas for finding and stamping out carbon emissions from your everyday life.

Here’s a glimpse of the journey: Roasters buy the beans directly from growers in countries like Colombia before they’re stored in a warehouse and loaded onto a sailboat — destined for ports like Le Havre, France or Penzance, England. The crossing typically takes six weeks. The beans are then couriered to specialty roasters before ending up in espressos served in coffee shops or at home.

“You’re one step away from the coffee being grown, almost,” said Richard Blake, founder of Yallah Coffee, a Cornwall-based roaster who sells beans sailed from Colombia. A 1-kilogram bag of Yallah Coffee’s Las Brisas beans costs £50 ($62) but boasts “a carbon footprint close to zero.” As a price comparison, the most expensive coffee beans UK supermarket Tesco Plc sells online is a 1-kilogram bag for £13.75 ($17).

Blake said people are happy to pay for a premium product “if they feel like there is value in all the steps.”

“That can be lost with the homogenized mix of beans on a supermarket shelf,” he said, “whereas if it’s single origin, and if it’s on a ship, there’s less people in the chain, and that creates more value.”

A few years ago, a small group of environmentally focused entrepreneurs, such as Shipped by Sail in the UK, started using pirate-like schooners to prove that goods like coffee could be transported with near-zero emissions — even if it took more money and all the risks linked with crossing the Atlantic on hundred-year-old wooden boats for a couple dozen bags of high-end beans.

What started as bravado is now making a bit more business sense. Consumers have become more willing to pay extra for greener coffee and roasters are rising to the challenge to provide it to them.

Take Belco, a sustainable coffee importer based in France serving around 1,000 specialty roasters all over Europe. The company bought 22 tons of Colombian coffee delivered by a schooner earlier this year. It’s had such positive feedback from customers that they’re now planning to import at least half of their total coffee beans — about 4,000 tons — by sailboat by 2025. In order to do this, though, they’re going to need a bigger boat.

Read more: A New Way to Ship Alcohol Could Eliminate Single-Use Bottles

Belco is relying on shipments from France’s TransOceanic Wind Transport, a sailing freight transport company. To meet growing demands of customers like Belco, TOWT is building a sailing vessel capable of holding 1,100 tons of goods. The first ship is due in June next year and three more should follow by 2026.

On the other side of the Atlantic, Costa Rica’s SailCargo Inc. is preparing to sail South American beans north to customers like Serge Picard, the owner of Café William Spartivento, the biggest Canadian-owned roaster for Fair Trade Organic coffee. Café Williams said it has invested in a new SailCargo vessel that will carry 250 tons of goods when it’s expected to launch next year.

Years of innovation have given the coffee industry plenty of ways to reduce its carbon footprint on the farm level, from replacing chemical fertilizers with organic waste to using renewable energy to power equipment. Shipping has remained a weak spot. It might be more efficient to transport coffee beans by sea than air, but today’s cargo ship engines are driven by bunker fuel — the dregs of the oil refining process. Large sailboats have motors for when they’re needed, but their main source of power is emissions-free wind, which gives them the added benefit of being mostly immune to volatile oil prices.

To be sure, conventional freighters — which hold thousands of tons of goods — are much more economic than a ye olde pirate ship, or even a 1,000-ton sailing vessel, for transporting lots of different cargo like coffee. But that isn’t stopping some coffee importers and sailboat manufacturers from trying to overthrow the heavy ships’ command of the high seas.

Maxence Lacroix, co-founder of Belgian specialty roastery Javry, which acquired its first order of coffee beans via sailboat earlier this year, is keen to see disruption in the shipping industry.

“We need lots of small actors to be able to change things, because the bigger actors are definitely not going to do it,” he said. “The change must come from the bottom.”

RELATED CONTENT

RELATED VIDEOS

Logistics Global Logistics Ocean Transportation Transportation & Distribution Global Supply Chain Management Global Trade & Economics Sustainability & Corporate Social Responsibility Food & Beverage Retail
  • Related Articles

    Mobility Solutions Are Changing The Way Companies Do Business

    These Workers Are Hurt by Trump’s Trade War, But Ineligible for His Bailout

    Pizza Is Partisan, and Companies Are Still Adjusting

Bloomberg

Volvo May Move Investments to U.S. If Europe’s Green-Tech Push Falls Short

More from this author

Subscribe to our Daily Newsletter!

Timely, incisive articles delivered directly to your inbox.

Popular Stories

  • A HAND TURNS A LARGE, LIGHTED DIAL WITH THE WORD RISK ON IT iStock-NicoElNino-1364371014.jpg

    Measuring KPIs and KRIs for Comprehensive Supplier Performance Management

    Technology
  • A COMPLEX SERIES OF ROADWAYS AND RAMPS, SEEN FROM HIGH ABOVE, IS PARTLY SHROUDED BY CLOUD

    Supply Chain Visibility Isn’t Just a Catchphrase; It’s an Imperative

    Logistics
  • A WOMAN IN HER LIVING ROOM GESTURES IN DISMAY ON THE PHONE OVER AN OPEN SHIPPING BOX

    Retailers – Quit Bellyaching and Differentiate Yourself on Returns

    Reverse Logistics
  • AN INDUSTRIAL CLAW GRABS SCRAP STEEL FROM A GIANT OUTDOOR PILE OF JUNKpg

    How Manufacturing Companies are Using Recycled Materials In Their Processes and What They're Using

    Sustainability & Corporate Social Responsibility
  • A Mid Adult Male Truck Driver Doing Exercises Before Road Trip by the side of a truck

    Podcast | Yoga for Truck Drivers? It’s a Mother Trucker!

    LTL/Truckload Services

Digital Edition

Scb q1 2023 cover

2023 Supply Chain Management Resource Guide: Packing for a Difficult Year

VIEW THE LATEST ISSUE

Case Studies

  • New Revenue for Cloud-Based TMS that Embeds Orderful’s Modern EDI Platform

  • Convenience Store Client Maximizes Profit and Improves Customer Service

  • A Digitally Native Footwear Brand Finds Rapid Fulfillment

  • Expanding Apparel Brand Scales Seamlessly with E-Commerce Technology

  • How a Global LSP Scaled its Security Program and Won More Business

Visit Our Sponsors

Orderful Yang Ming Alithya
Barcoding Blue Yonder BNSF Logistics
CoEnterprise Data Capture Deposco
E2open GAINSystems Generix
Geodis GEP GreyOrange
Here Honeywell Intelligrated IFM
Infor Inmar Keelvar
Kinaxis Korber Lean Solutions Group 2H
Liberty SBF Locus Robotics Logility
LogistiVIEW Lucas Systems MCA Connect
MPO Nvidia Old Dominion
OpenText ORTEC Overhaul
Parsyl PMMI QIMA
Redwood Logistics Ryder E-commerce by Whiplash Saddle Creek Logistics
Schneider Dedicated Setlog Holding AG Ship4WD
Shipwell Tecsys TGW Systems
Thomson Reuters Tive Trailer Bridge
Vecna Robotics Verity
Verusen
  • More From SCB
    • Featured Content
    • Video Library
    • Think Tank Blog
    • SupplyChainBrain Podcast
    • Whitepapers
    • On-Demand Webinars
    • Upcoming Webinars
  • Digital Offerings
    • Digital Issue
    • Subscribe
    • Manage Your Subscription
    • Newsletters
  • Resources
    • Events Calendar
    • SCB's Great Supply Chain Partners
    • Supplier Directory
    • Case Study Showcase
    • Supply Chain Innovation Awards
    • 100 Great Partners Form
  • SCB Corporate
    • Advertise on SCB.COM
    • About Us
    • Privacy Policy
    • Contact Us
    • Data Sharing Opt-Out

All content copyright ©2023 Keller International Publishing Corp All rights reserved. No reproduction, transmission or display is permitted without the written permissions of Keller International Publishing Corp

Design, CMS, Hosting & Web Development :: ePublishing