Groupe Beneteau exports nearly 80% of the boats built in Europe. The United States is the main destination for these exports and the North American market represents almost 30% of our revenues. The exceptional dimensions of our boats and the need to safeguard their quality at every stage during their transportation makes this flow a real logistics challenge. NEOLINE offers a bespoke solution that is ecologically and economically relevant for our transatlantic flows, with loading also located very close to our yards. As the world’s leading builder of recreational sailing yachts, the use of sails for maritime transportation, effectively put in place with the NEOLINE project, was a natural choice for us ” explains Magdeleine Allaume, Groupe Beneteau Procurement and Supply Chain Director.
By combining cost-cutting speed and an optimized energy mix with wind propulsion, the Neoliner, a 136-meter long roll-on, roll-off (ro-ro) ship with 4,200 square meters of sails developed by NEOLINE, makes it possible to reduce CO2 emissions by up to 90% compared with a traditional cargo ship on an equivalent route. To achieve this, it features an innovative blend of technical solutions borrowed from the maritime transport industry, as well as from the world of competitive sailing, in order to make transport more logistically and economically proficient, while also setting the bar for energy efficiency.
The NEOLINE project plans to build its first two ships based on this model and commission them by 2021 on a pilot route connecting Saint-Nazaire in France to America’s East Coast and Saint-Pierre & Miquelon.
GROUPE BENETEAU
