Newscasts - World's largest cargo sailboat makes first transatlantic crossing

First Atlantic Nickel & Cobalt

31/10/2025 08:33

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Source: 'Reuters - Business videos'

Description: The Neoliner Origin, the world's largest cargo sailboat, completed its maiden transatlantic voyage on Thursday (October 30) despite sustaining damage to its aft sail during the crossing, forcing the crew to rely partially on its motor and remaining intact sail.

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Video Transcript:

The world's largest cargo sailboat finished its first Atlantic crossing on Thursday, the Port of Baltimore welcomed the Neoliner Origin, a near 450-foot-long sailboat with its cargo of Renault vehicles, machinery, French liqueurs, and other merchandise. The boat earlier stopped at St. Pierre and Miquelon, a French overseas territory near Canada, but the crew of the Neoliner Origin had to partially rely on its motor for the crossing after a storm damaged it at sail. The design of the Neoliner Origin aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80% to 90% compared to traditional diesel-powered cargo ships. Jean Zanuttini is CEO of Neoliner, the French ship owner which commissioned it. He says it will take about six months to gain a better understanding of its performance.

Wind propulsion is very interesting for that because it is free energy available everywhere, not always at the same amount, of course, but it is predictable, and it is not impacting anywhere else. You are not relying on a very large infrastructure ashore to prepare carbon-free fuel, for example, you are more independent. So, it's very interesting for small- to mid-scale vessels, and we intend to prove it with this first pilot vessel.

The Neoliner Origin can carry up to 5,300 tons of cargo and has a commercial cruising speed of 11 knots. It aims to operate monthly rotations between Europe and North America. French Naval engineering firm MAURIC was in charge of designing the ship. CEO Vincent Sagan said it was a challenge to balance economic viability with environmental innovations.

It was about understanding what had been done in the past, whether this technology had been abandoned, and above all, rethinking this architecture with completely new constraints, whether regulatory or technological, with much smaller crews. Therefore, the innovative solutions that have been implemented obviously addressed the rigging and certain equipment such as anti-drift systems.

While newly designed wind propulsion systems like those on the Neoliner Origin are more efficient at cutting emissions, the UK National Clean Maritime Research Hub says other systems like adding sails to existing boats also exist, and such retrofitted vessels can achieve emissions reductions of 5% to 20% with no operational changes and up to 30% when optimized for wind conditions, meaning it's never too late or too costly to adapt to new winds of change.