Season 3, Episode 104 : Guillaume Le Grand

00:03
Guillaume from TOWT, thank you so much for coming along on the green element podcast. I am so looking forward to finding out more about what it is that you do. I came across you from a friend of mine actually who works in media. And she emailed me and said, wow, look at what these guys are doing. You need to get them on the podcast. And we reached out and you thankfully said yes. So, thank you so much for saying yes, I know that you are probably incredibly busy. And in your words, disrupting the shipping industry. I can't wait to find out more.

00:39
Thank you very much, Will. You've got really good friends.

00:44
I like to think so. I like to think so. So, I mean, let's see if you could, what is it that you do? You know, in a nutshell, really.

00:53
We use the wind and try to harness it to transport large amounts of cargo in co2 neutral way and to promote it and value it on the customer's markets so as to make it viable in the long term and build new selling cargo vessels. This is what we do in unnatural just to develop a little more, we charter existing sailing vessels. We've done so for the past 10 years; we've moved about 1000 tons of cargo. We can be close to crossing the channel or along the European coast or across the ocean. So we started trading goods buying and selling goods for what there were noble enough and good enough to be transported by sale and for what they had and virtually nil carbon footprint and then started working on behalf of third party cargo owners and then we have invested the last three years in R&D and are about to launch the builds of a 67 meter thousand ton carrying three-masted sailing cargo vessel with you know, a middle large or middle-sized company on board, importing cocoa, beans, and coffee, as well as tequila from Mexico or exporting cognac, champagne, as well as jams for instance, at a different freight rate at the freight that includes the fair deal for the planet and that allows the cargo owner to apply on each of the product label called animals that actually documents and gives the end customer the information about how the crossing happened.

02:57
And I mean this is how It's so funny, isn't it? How we're almost going back in time? With what you're doing. And I know a friend of mine was involved in a Dutch firm that, um, he helped design kites.

03:14
Yes.

03:16
Were retrofitted onto boats. So, therefore, they could use trade winds and turn, I guess turn off the engines and winch the kites up into the air. And therefore, they would then get pulled along by the kites and you've almost I guess you've gone one step further, in some ways, where you're actually only using the sale to go across and so if I was a Coffee Company, and is it more cost-effective to use you?

03:50
Well, you can't have both a beautiful ship or zero-carbon neutral, zero carbon footprint, and a really nice label and something that cost less than something that already costs almost nothing. Because existing shipping if you were to import 30 tons of coffee in a 40-foot container from Veracruz, Mexico let's say to Southampton you probably pay 500 pounds or dollars for the shipping which is very little per coffee bag. That's something that 1,000th of a penny, so this is the current cost of shipping doesn't charge you for the emission of mostly co2 but also sulfur gases that are emitted into the atmosphere especially in the international waters where it doesn't exist virtually legally. So, we are trying to say look, you are a coffee importer have very nice origins your you know you want to promote your coffee from Colombia or from Mexico. And we've got the capacity to move 50 or a hundred 500 tons of coffee on your behalf. Would you think that if for each volume, we can publish the film about the cooperative you work with about the stevedoring company that loaded cargo and then do pro trader the each of the sailors and give you a customer, the exact GPS footprint how the winds actually pushed the ship to the UK and Yucatan un customer that you contributed to the savings of 500 tonnes of co2, which is about 110 grams per bag? Do you think that would promote your origin and the way you source your coffee in Colombia for something that altogether costs in the 10 or 15 pounds per bag because that's only whatever costs and probably some would say yes, this is what we're doing at the moment, there's a French company called Belko. And they've booked about 3000 tons with us, from Colombia, Mexico, from Brazil, from Ethiopia. So this is something a good deal for the planet going beyond greenwashing, promoting your terroir, your origin, it can be here for tropical products it can be abroad for, you know, people in the US don't always know that champagne is also French region, and is good sometimes to remind it. And there's no better way to promote an origin, a soil a way to do things a taste than to actually promote the way it's come to you. So, we're actually trying not to be sort of environmentalists or activists but actually to promote a positive commercial offer in the logistics of something that's not easy of usually. Shipping is something massive is something that's very opaque in general, something that it's very sort of level down in terms of costs, you know, the cheaper, the better in terms of shipping. So, we're trying to change that and offer something that's positive. And that corresponds to watch several companies need now to be concrete and tangible about the way they can contribute into making a better world and of carbon emissions, but also speak to younger generations also think of themselves in 10,20,30 years’ time, because their current shipping contracts implies that they should resign or re bargain every six months. So, we are saying look, we are signed together for 10 years and something you don't you know, and we're going to have a beautiful ship coming. And that's good for your image in general. And that costs much less than most of any sort of advertising campaign you might go into. And that's something that, you know, allows you to speak directly to your customer. He sorts of goes without saying into the UK because you're in Ireland and Europe will have someone that was a sailor in your family somehow. But it's good to speak to even on the continent to anyone saying that, you know, 70% of the surface of the planet is blue. Your coffee will never grow in your garden. And we can think of a 21st century where we try to curb climate change while trying to do things in a better way, while still having a certain value of the things that don't. US thinks about going back to the past. That's only partially right. Of course, it's a 600-year-old tradition and skill and craft and know-how That we are using you also making the most of more modern technologies. But out there in their server on the blue ocean. The only and very abundant energy is wind and it's renewable. And it's now there. Now I'm saying that for the past 10 or 15 years is now really predictable with you know, new technology, you can actually route your ship where you need to without, you know, selling into the storm or without really having no wins at all. So, you can actually guarantee your service that's virtually nil carbon, and that's efficient. That's actually efficient. That's what we offer 10 knots then 10 knots of 1,000 tons. We cross the ocean, from frost say to New York in 13 days. So that's something that's quite comparable to what the modern services offer. And we need to actually be efficient at all levels of the value chain. And in that, we are efficient. That was a long answer, wasn't it? Will.

10:19
No, no, no, it's brilliant. It's really, really good. Really descriptive.

10:23
Sorry about my English, by the way to all the...

10:26
Your English is fantastic. And if anyone is wanting to complain, they can more than welcome to come on to the podcast and speak in French. And as an Englishman, so, therefore, I don't think

10:40
So, Azerbaijan joins in, isn't it?

10:44
I'd also say that what you have is you've put together the true cost of shipping, really, and I think that it was really interesting for you to hear what you know your explanation around safe 500 pounds for that shipping container and it costing naught point naught pence per thing and yours is 15 pence, I would say that 15 minutes is actually the true cost. And that's what should be taken into consideration when you buy coffee. And you're also fueled by coffee,

11:19
You should say 14 and I'd probably say 16.

11:22
Yeah, yeah.

11:24
No, no, you see the cost and the price and everything, of course, we are put out a new generation ship, maybe there's going to be other generations. What does a ton of co2 into the atmosphere cost to us and what does it cost to you know, hundred next generations after us is something that you see this is the cost of all the efforts and best, you know, service we can bring some things that also make it realistic feels sort of democratic. You can have a nice coffee for three, four pounds, a coffee bag. You don't double the price as we currently do more or less, because at the moment this is on the ships that we work with. The cost is higher than that because this is the cost of what it takes to use existing traditional sailing vessels have crossed the ocean with them.

12:21
Yeah, no, exactly, I think a future-proofing the way that we can buy and trade with each other around the world as well. Because we do have to take into consideration the environmental cost. And I think people don't actually think about that they, they'll look at the origin and they will look at who the company is and the way their company is. So are they a B Corp, for example, but they may not necessarily think about the whole supply chain within it and there's a number of B Corps that are now quite Large coffee companies that are B Corps are becoming vehicles in the UK. So, purpose-driven coffee companies and I would hazard a guess that they will listen, and they will be watching your journey and start to think I'm actually touts make sense with what they say and what they do.

13:18
And I think well business the end consumers have proven in the past that they can contribute to changing things look at what the organic labels have allowed the what is the association in the UK the sole association and what sort of certified certifies for the products that come from abroad, you know, that actually allowed an improvement in the way agricultural practices were performed around the world. Look at the fair-trade movement that's hopefully helped reline the sort of interests of The North and the South. And it's just that there's no carbon label. At the moment you can't testify, you can prefer a chocolate bar for what is being brought on the ship that for instance, does slow steaming, which is reducing its speed so as to reduce his footprint. So, we've been, for instance, looking at what the organic or the Fair-Trade movements were doing. And one is agricultural one is about the local economy advantage, General premium that's paid to the consumer. But we realized we needed to do something entirely different and because you are eventually the end payer for the maritime shipping, but you don't know anything about how your T-shirt has come from China. You can't even find out even if you were to investigate what ship boats your coffee from Mexico say to the UK. So even if you wanted to do something better for the planet, you couldn't so we save the we don't say the, you know, conventional fossil fuel cargo ships or bad? Well, we let the others say it we just say that what we do is now we don't say I haven't said anything. Say that's what we do and with what we do, you got to produce those things to which you can find the information about the crossing and anyone understands that a 20 knot, westerly prevailing wind allows you to come you know, in a favorable manner back to Europe. And this is how we want to explain this. This is part of our sort of maritime identity, dignity, and we all part of it, we all should know what happens out there on the sea. For the product from overseas, so of course, there is a business mind Commercial approaching what we do, and the similar for instance, they're quite big in France is the first truckload makers. They feel are Whoa, up to 12,000 tonnes of cocoa beans from Abidjan, Ivory Coast, to France. And these are exactly this is, you know, the small guys that sort of buy two bags of coffee a year, which is also what we do, and we respect very much got our customers. But it's a company that's able to make its own decisions and not to be lowered by greenwashing as many initiatives that more or less greenwash, the future of shipping. There's plenty of liters of green paint around for all sorts of labels and industry-wide sort of initiative that don't actually reduce anything. We, The sailing ship either you on board, and you know, it's an impeccable way of transporting it, you can value it, there's no cheating about it no sort of, or you're not on board. And you know, and there's either-or. And of course, there's the romantics about it, because we're aware of it, you know, every that our sort of very sort of culture and civilization was based on sale. But we don't, we don't really put it forward. Because it's all sort of somehow untold, there's something that's just thought of the general sort of spirits around it. It's really about the footprint of the maritime expertise about our sailors. And about how the wind is actually you know, the best way to transport cargo across the ocean sale is the only way to harness the wind. You were mentioning, of course, the tides guide. So, if all of the 50,000 conventional fossil fuel GAVI ships had guides, and you see the sort of general the global fleet, the mission would be going down by something like 10 or 15%, which would be great. But as such a kit doesn't move a large selling cars larger cargo ship, it sort of helps. When you got the adaptable or the favorable winds, you can host it and then it sorts of lowers your consumption and emissions. So, you don't switch off the engine with the current ways you got like all sorts of wings and ideas and 3d pictures on the web. What's good with the sail is that we've got centuries or more of experience. Now textiles allowed us to build larger sizes more efficiently. And it's got the best wood, let's say one unit of energy from the wind, this is the best way this is the best yield to transform that energy in speed for, for sailing ship, you could put a windmill on board a ship and transform the energy into the propeller, you would probably multiply 0.1 by 0.1. And at the end of the day, you're your ship wouldn't move and would be dangerous and you would need your engine anyway. With sales you take you to make the most of the wind energy to actually move your ship on long distances with big displacements sorry, talking about future generations. Bear with me. One second. I'm right here. So, when this sale is not just Pirates of the Caribbean, who is not at all actually is. It is a scientifically proven way to harness the power of wind.

20:19
Yeah, no. And how, how did you get into this? Were you? Are you a sailor? Is this what you did beforehand? Are you an engineer? What was your backstory for this?

20:32
Well, I'm not a professional sailor. I was a young sailor when I was six, seven years old with my grandfather in southern Brittany. And we were sailing without GPS without really knowing, you know where we were. And that was back in the sort of late 80s, early 90s. And this is only afterward that I realized like, but then also sort of integrated, I sort of felt the power of wind, you know, you can't just shoot your sail with your, you know, with your arms like that, you know, even on a five-meter boat, you need to be this is really strong. And that blows all the time. And why don't we just use it, you know, that was the sort of initial sort of seed that was planted in my brain back then and then I, where I actually started, you know, far from the sea is in Leon oil forum anyway, and sort of wrote my dissertation about Kyoto and the way maybe the cap and trade thing about putting back the price of carbon on the market might actually, you know, as if the invisible hand is ever did anything sensible to the environment, but maybe was remember 2005 or six, you know, we thought that we might start stopped doing silly things. Because Kyoto really raised a lot of hopes, you know, you really, really thought it was, you know, we realized, you know, Al Gore had published Inconvenient Truth and suddenly we realized that the eyes were melting and that, hello, we've got no way not even to go back. But even to stop that and just living makes us warm the climate. So, you know, that was a bit and maybe Kyoto might help. Of course, it didn't. And I worked for a couple years in sort of trying to do the carbon silence thing, actually in the UK as well. And when I was in England, I went back to sail a little bit down to Brighton and sort of started to do the, the English way we should be a bit sporty about crossing the channel with, you know, five strong guys and good sherbert and down Five pints, and then I had to say it back. And, you know, that was the weekend. And Okay, that was interesting. That was and my idea really was how to try to give a meaning to say what do we go out sailing for is that for pleasure-seeking Well, okay. And that's quite, you know, sort of selfish or that or not selfish but that's, of course, that's the best way to discover the element and to the tides and winds and, you know, you see the physics around about you know, there's not that many ways. The racing thing the racing is just another way to go around servers just slightly faster, but obviously, they also helped, you know, new technologies to you know, read a bit like Formula One. And I was thinking in 2006-07 maybe to buy you 15 meters of steel. Catch with two friends and stop working go to the domain that was back in the time, actually, we're in central London, all these sorts of farmers market was sort of, you know, organic thing and you know, fair trade. And we thought that would be sort of what is that spill filled market and that sort of plays, you know, have a locally roasted, organic sale, low carb and safe transported coffee, we thought that there was a case there was something an opportunity to do. And then we would be sailing for five months and bring back two tonnes and do the even setting of the teams and that would have been great. And it showed that we had no experience in the logistics custom. So, you know, we could be sort of doling them out. You know, you never have a coffee, you have to go out there and buy coffee in the mountain. I'm just saying this because I've got, I'm surrounded with bags of organic Colombian coffee right now because this is actually what we did. And I realized that I would do it on my friends thought I was just some sort of funny idea, you know, and I was that was my fixed idea. And then I met with Jenna was commonly my associate in everything really. And she was really a bit of a serial entrepreneur, she had a business sort of thinking and said, you know, we should do a company. Because you could do an NGO, you could do a political party, you could do some sort of a, you could do a circus, you know, you could do it, you know, there's plenty of ways to do say cargo or a PR company, but we thought that there was going to be a company, you know, we had even though we knew that there was going to be hard and that usually there's no money and, but if you don't prove anything in terms of your ability to make a living out of it, Then there's no point you know, the big cargo. Fossil fuel ships will have prevailed. So, we knew that was going to be hard that we were nothing. We weren't even a drop in the ocean and that the ocean was really big. And then, for a couple of years, I came back to France and started working. Well, that's a long story. Anyway, I developed, I spent most of my time developing what dad was going to become. And then I met wells, though that was identifying all the largest sailing ships, we sort of made the decision that we would be charting existing sailing vessels not start by saying that we would build a ship of the future and then tweeting and retweeting it and then waiting for you know, we thought No, okay, let's do it. Let's charter let's work with existing that ships You know, there are really big sailing ships out there. There must be some that you know might carry these two tonnes or maybe 20 tonnes of coffee. And we met with one called Tres Hombres. One of the pioneers of the fleet was in 2010 crossing the ocean for the first time and they're going to do it for the 10th time bringing back rum, cocoa beans, and coffee. So, we started selling it and distributing it chartering the ship from Devon to Brittany and distribute organic relay from England to the Bretton organic markets. And then from there, we developed a small sort of trade business not for the sake of trade, but because we want to promote a sale cargo labels and to pay the boats for a new activity and diversify what they could be doing. But also, to know the probe the products better No. And I realized that now speaking to similar or for instance, I know what a ‘criado’ ‘forastero’. Oh, what a cadmium rate means into cocoa bean or how you wrote your cocoa beans and all that experience was gained over the years or how you keep your the duty suspended over the alcohol that you transport transfer, what sort of documents you need customs why so we were we were really gaining in experiences of the cargoes of the sort of logistical expertise you need to have around this but also my sort of sailing thing was coming back and needed to study how the winds were blowing over the year on the Atlantic. Because you see the seasons trade winds that you were bringing up have their own seasons. And can they actually work with the coffee harvest season actually, they do very naturally. And so, we and also the contracts, you know, how do you chart a vessel Where is the money? How do you know, how do you get on with the sailors? How do you, you know, value everybody and you don't. And so, we charted several French ships as well new larger ships tender who can close the Greyhound will quote the Avalon two and the gallon for instance. I know these, like coming back from the passage of a floating anachronisms, but they're here and they carry all together hundreds of tons of cargo and they do it right now with the hundreds of sailors around them, you know, ship owners. We are part of that sale cargo movement, say and promote leverage for the label. The fact that these products have been brought by say it does exist, believe it or not, and it has an it's not that expensive. And as of 2015, we really started sort of thinking of investing do you know looking for grass for the R&D in the field of the newer ships. So, then there were designs out there of really large sailing vessels over 100 meters such as the Eco liner or been on ship from England. And the decision was well the thinking was that you have to have a strategy at some point when you're David and then you need to fight Goliath you know, you know, when you're really you're where you're, you know, the Palestinian and there's the Israeli tank, you need to have a strategy. You don't just go you know, we where are we going to sort of build all the first new selling cargo ships? Are they going to be trying to be as cheap as the, you know, 400-meter container carriers? Do you want to compete with them? 500 quid containers for crossing from Mexico. Well, if we do that anyway, you know, this is okay, we wouldn't probably need to wait for the old price to raise or we would need for new sort of more demanding environmental regulation on the internet, the IMO the International Maritime Organization. Well, then that's another head of a sort of, you know, let's not do that let's value what we do for something that cost a few pens, chop, chocolate bar, coffee bag or bottle of rum and something that makes it sort of happen and break the ceiling of the sort of larger market and not go for 130 something like five mast sailing vessel because it's very risky, very risky financially, you would sort of be reaching out to markets where You're so big anyway that most of those are the freight forwarders or the cargo owners. You know they used to have anything you know, if not cheaper Not at all, you know, this is the cheaper, the better what why would they pay no anything more than what they already paid, they've got no incentives for it. So we thought that given the current technologies, what we could do given the sort of freight rates being able to charge something like 50 pounds 40 pounds per kilo to cross the ocean is something that we think is you know, we can work on this for going for her thousands of tons, and that would be that we would need to carry 1000 tonnes eight times a year being around the ocean. And steel house steel, most mechanized largely with seven sailors you can have passengers and then you can start check and you don't do iron ore Of course and we don't you know, move around I don't know tractors and things like that. Of course, this is the traditional rules of importing again cocoa beans coffee but uddhav is Hara Is that how you say you know that thing from Mexico. Maple syrup, sugars, spices, and exporting to the Caribbean products that they needed then they need from here. Export to us use the most make the most of our being French and export the best champagnes and cognacs and wines to Northern American to Canada. Coming back from there from wood, actually wood to four-barrel makers in France. Exporting jams, the famous icon quoted jam from France. That's very potion so Franken chic in, in the US, and importing cocoa beans from Ivory Coast but also exporting the champagne as they were keen on champagne. So these are all the markets that the product can be shipped for 50 cents, so kilo with a nice label with a nice identity giving hope to brands that sometimes need to rejuvenate to be younger, you know, to do and to address to younger clients. And no, none of them are, you know, they're sort of publicly-traded where you need, you know, 50 people to breathe and sit in the same room and no one ever sees him or anyway and they sort of keep cussing at each other. And you never really get to the bottom and no one ever decides, and you know, because they're too big anyway. But if you go to family business family businesses can be big, and but you can tell them that sail cargo is not about logistics only it's not about only your supply chain, you're going to have to change your supply chain you're going to have to change the way you store your things the way you understand your own, you know, just in time thing and you know, thinking financially you have your different fluxes but you can also gain in terms of general image PR but also label can actually change your, the way you actually commercialize you the way you sell your products, and we've got even other points to put forward. The quality inside our house is sometimes better Well, it's always better than in containers, it smells better for instance. So when you load cocoa beans, which is fatty and to capture all smells, you are you know, really happy that you can Vance your holes and that you can you know make sure it doesn't stink because that's what actually happens. as you lower quality of the cocoa bean coming in, we can age spirits and this is a non-negligible part of our income we actually aid your wine and spirits because the holes and the temperature variation you know, we got contracts for aging wine and cognacs and rums. So, these are all the, we got passengers possibly. And these all make it viable to build the first ship, so this is what we're doing.

36:30
brilliant, brilliant. I mean it sounds fantastic. What are you guys doing and

36:35
And then you go see the bankers sorry, into the next day because the bank is looking at looks at you like, Oh, this guy's such a lunatic. And he said you know I'm the head of shipping in the biggest bank of the world. Well not maybe but let's say the biggest Frenchman and you know, we know what it is like, you know shipping and we don't work for less than five hundred million euros. Okay, okay, sorry, no, I don't need that much, but I would just need you to know, started but there are clever people, you know, they can, you know, you can talk to us and after an hour they are like, you know, shipping finance, shipping finance, obviously, you know, shipping created finance almost, you know, in finance create the shipping somehow this sort of that intertwine. And, actually, it's quite simple. You've got six categories of ships, and there's a purchase price, there's a price of a second market rate, and then a sort of a, you know, ocean in which the shipper is going to say more or less, or there's a job is going to do and that's free figures. And if the light is green, then you got 500 million, you know, and build your ships and do your thing, you know, but how much is your ship in the secondary market? How much is lalala? Oh, that's very risky to come on. You know, this is a very small ship. It only cost you know, 10 million and sorry, I can't help you. So this is you even need to be innovating in terms of funding, so we are actually trying to go to the fundraising and go to the renewable energy funds or we got really good, you know, really good news at the moment who really happy with it, and people understand the tangible Well, the reality behind it, but it's just that you need to change a bit things even in the money behind it, etc.

38:35
It's, um, it sounds like you've got an awful lot going on. And I want to thank you for being on this podcast. It's

38:45
I've been a bit long, Will, haven't I?

38:49
It's been it's been

38:50
a really, really easy podcast, actually, because all I've done is Listen, I feel like I've been a listener. And sometimes it's great. That's actually really nice because you know that What we are here for when we're not listening to me, we're listening to the person that we're talking to, and we're learning from them. And it's just fascinating what you have gone through and the fact that you are learning all this from scratch. But it's, you know, you are working in a very, very old shipping industry. It will be it's just, it'll be interesting to see what goes on for the future because we know that shipping has to change, we are already starting to see elements of that bear through electric dripping. So, therefore, you are a part of that journey. And you will probably be pushing people into more of a change as well. And so, thank you for being that catalyst, and thank you for being on the show.

39:54
Yeah, no worries at all. Thank you, Will, for having me, and thank you all to have patience to listen to me if you reach that point.

40:04
I'm sure they will.