Grain de Sail II

WHY IS GRAIN DE SAIL II BEING BUILT IN VIETNAM?

WE TELL YOU MORE ABOUT OUR SECOND CARGO SAILBOAT, GRAIN DE SAIL II, BUILT BY PIRIOU IN A YARD IN VIETNAM.

The first Grain de Sail cargo sailboat, a 24-meter aluminum-hulled demonstrator, was built in France, near Nantes, and has been in operation since November 2020. For Grain de Sail II, a larger 52-meter aluminum-hulled vessel, various French and European shipyards were invited to tender. Although some shipyards did not wish to take part in our tender, several did respond, and it was the Breton shipyard Piriou that was finally selected in January 2022. Their proposal to carry out part of the work at their headquarters in Concarneau and the rest at their yard specialized in aluminum construction based in Ho-Chi Minh, Vietnam was the best suited to our needs. Lorient-based LORIMA was selected to manufacture and install the masts, while Breton naval architecture firm L2Onaval worked on the design of our cargo yacht.

A construction project of this scale for a first-of-its-kind vessel is complex, and takes several years to organize and bring to fruition. Immense efforts and thousands of man-hours were required to solve both technical and budgetary challenges, both by our in-house teams and by various external partners from different trades.

The decision to award a contract to a shipyard is a major one, and is based first and foremost on precise specifications, a level of competence and quality, availability to deliver the vessel according to a defined schedule, and of course a global budget, as well as a shared vision between our companies. Piriou’s proposal perfectly met all these criteria, and the solution of building in Ho-Chi Minh was chosen.

It’s fair to point out that the construction of roto-propelled cargo ships is still something of a novelty, and that French shipyards are not necessarily in a position or best placed to respond to these projects. If our preference is to work with French suppliers and builders, all the criteria listed above will be taken into account in the decision and award (not just national preference). It’s also worth noting that other French projects for merchant ships are also being carried out abroad (Poland, Turkey, Romania, etc.). We depend on an incipient ecosystem that goes beyond Grain de Sail, and which is set to grow as the marine transportation industry takes shape.