With record high coffee prices and shortages in supply and labor, should roasters throw caution to the wind and set sail on this sustainable endeavor?
BY MELINA DEVONEY
BARISTA MAGAZINE ONLINE
Featured photo courtesy of Bella Barista
In the 15th century, the explosion of the global coffee trade was made possible via wooden sail ships, in what is now referred to as “the Age of Sail.” Harkening back to these times, pioneers in the modern coffee industry are steering a movement to decarbonize coffee transportation.
This new Age of Sail evokes “a romanticized memory of slower times when precious cargo from distant lands took months to arrive via treacherous seas,” says Laura Richard, Roastmaster and co-founder of Saltwinds Coffee in New Brunswick, Canada.
Coffee shipped by sail is creating “magic moments filled with connection” not only with our history, but among the coffee value chain, says Richard Blake, founder and CEO of Yallah Coffee in Cornwall, England.
“I love the days the sail ships arrive, unloading and celebrating these wonderful journeys and the many hands involved,” Richard says. “Those days have always transported me back in time to a world where we appreciate the lives of people involved in the goods we use.”
As a souvenir, sail ship coffee is imbued with nostalgic flavors of its voyage.
“Coffees that were shipped in wooden boats likely tasted different than conventional coffees, due to their long exposure to warm salt sea air during the long voyage,” Laura says. “Coffees exposed to those conditions might undergo some chemical changes that would render them different tasting than the coffees we get today.”
Marcel Binley, Managing Director at Bella Barista in Wellingborough, England, says that sea salt and humidity reduces coffee’s acidity. When the industry started shipping coffee in metal containers, its cup flavor profiles changed. So did its carbon footprint.
Decarbonizing Coffee
A vast portion of the carbon footprint of coffee comes from its transportation—much of it overseas via conventional oil—and gas-powered cargo ships (container ships).
According to the French-based coffee importer Belco, maritime transport accounts for 3% of global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions (that’s more than airplanes) and 20% of the air pollutants sulphur dioxide (SO2) and nitrogen dioxide (NO2) emissions. Cargo ships generate double the authorized sound limit in nightclubs, which disrupts sonar navigation of dolphins, whales, and porpoise.
In the past several years, coffee roasters have caught wind of sailboats as sustainable alternatives. These wind-powered boats drastically reduce noise pollution and CO2 and eliminate SO2 and NO2.
“(Belco) can ensure some 90% reduction (of) carbon footprint, no leak of fuel, no sound pollution and better conditions for coffee traveling on the sail compartments,” says Angel Barrera, partner at Belco and and General Manager at Belco Colombia.
Bella Barista first purchased sail ship coffee from Belco in November of 2024, and Yallah puzzled together its first sail ship coffee of 2025 via Belco and two additional sail partners. One journey of coffee by sail versus cargo ship reduced CO2 emissions by 84% for Yallah and 95% for Bella Barista.
This impressive feat was one that sail importers before Belco and their partners have failed to maintain.
Yallah first sourced sail ship coffee in 2020 through a now-inactive sail importer.
“It felt like a big risk at the time—no one else was doing it in the U.K.—and we had to put all the cash up front,” Richard says. Last year, Yallah’s customer demand for sail ship coffee didn’t justify the effort. Plus, Yallah couldn’t find a way around trucking the coffee from Le Havre, France to the U.K. Then came Belco.
After a test voyage by sail in 2022, Belco sent its first coffee by sail in September of 2024. Each year, Belco transports one sailboat shipment of coffee from Colombia, two from Brazil and one from Central America to its headquarters in France. Every sail shipment can carry up to 900 metric tons of coffee (the equivalent of 50 shipping containers): tiny compared to cargo ships carrying upwards of 20,000 containers. Belco sailboats also arrive with goods from France at coffee origins.
After sailing into Le Havre, the coffee is transported to roasteries across the U.K. (and sparsely across Europe) via a combination of chartered ferry and road travel.
“We are the first coffee company shipping this volume by sail and possibly the largest client of this shipping line,” Angel says.
The speed of sail coffee is 10-13 Nautical miles—barely slower than cargo ships at 15 Nautical miles. Sailing routes are more direct since one origin can completely fill a sailboat with coffee.
“The boat only has to sail into that one port, fill up with coffee, and then return back to Europe,” Marcel says. “Depending on where it sails from, you’re only talking 25 to 35 days of sail time.”
Still, sail ship coffee is not guaranteed to stay afloat.
Rough Waters on the Horizon
The coffee-by-sail movement has a ways to go before it’s efficient and affordable. Sail cargo is expensive without the economies of scale of container ships. Infrequent voyages, limited trade routes and dock infrastructure unfit for sailboats raise cost and logistical barriers.
“A lot of these ports don’t have the flexibility to take an 85-meter sailboat,” Marcel explains. “They’re used to ships coming in 50, 60 times that size.”
Expanding sail routes beyond Europe won’t make financial sense until demand grows across a range of industries and regions worldwide. With more routes, roasters could source sail ship coffee from origins with lower current prices and sailboats could export goods to coffee origins. Both strategies can offset transport costs.
Currently, roasters don’t buy enough sail ship coffee for Belco to justify adding sail docks along even U.K. coasts.
Roasters like Yallah are collaborating with sail importers to piece together more reliable routes in the U.K.
“We’re trying to balance doing the right thing with offering a product that’s not exclusive and alienating,” Richard says.
Despite their best efforts, roasters are hit with transport costs high enough to capsize any small business. Shipping coffee by sail is 20 times more expensive than shipping conventionally for Yallah; it adds $1.50 per kilo of coffee for Bella Barista. Marcel isn’t certain that sail ship coffee will remain affordable for roasters, or whether home and wholesale customers will pay extra for it.
The New Age of Sail—or a Sinking Ship?
Roasters hope that global coffee trade connected by sail is possible, but they are far from smooth sailing.
Sail ships are “not a golden ticket,” Richard says, “We need to be open and honest about the benefits and limitations of these ships. Otherwise, it’s just more greenwashing.”
Small roasters urge coffee corporations to steer the ship towards economies of scale by embracing sail ship coffee in truly impactful volumes, not as just a mere PR stunt.
For better or for worse, decarbonized coffee “is quite an easy sell to big corporate companies that have lots of carbon credits to try and offset,” Marcel says.
When done for the better, Richard thinks scaling up sail ship coffee is possible with large efficiency and smaller “shuttle” boats complementing each other.
“We definitely need to be pragmatic about the solutions and embrace bigger businesses working together to import more coffee by sail,” Richard says.
For now, sail cargo is less about practicality and more about awareness, says Prunella Meschini, R&D manager at Le Piantagioni del Caffè, in Tuscany, Italy. Le Piantagioni del Caffè began ordering sail ship coffee from Belco in 2024, joining a rank of roasters hoping to serve as proofs of concept and vessels for education. Already, these roasters are elucidating the carbon footprint of transporting coffee and how we can shrink it.
Prunella thinks the coffee industry has a ways to go in building awareness and differentiating sail ship coffee enough to spur adequate demand.
“Final customers (have) almost reached a point where they’re not gonna pay more because they don’t understand why they should,” she says. Roasters need to cohesively and simply relay their good reason to customers.
Marcel bets that customers who are privy to the benefits of sail cargo are more likely to embrace the markup at a specialty coffee shop, where he calculates the extra sail shipping costs of $1.50 per kilo of coffee would only add $0.03 per drink.
Marcel believes roasters should support importers like Belco in their “gutsy commitment” to pioneer sail ship coffee, but recognizes that, at least for now, decarbonized transportation is a luxury. Closer in reach and equally urgent is an industry-wide reduction of the carbon footprint of coffee farms; conventional farming practices contribute to a carbon footprint dozens of times larger than coffee grown sustainably.
Still, roasters and importers are staying optimistic.
Yallah, Le Piantagioni del Caffè and Bella Barista continue supporting the movement, with Bella Barista aiming to source upwards of 80% of its coffee by sail by 2028.
Once Belco expands sail routes across the Pacific and to Africa in the near future, Angel is confident that Belco will reach its goal to ship 90% of its coffee by sail.
Belco sailboats may also soon be a prospect for passengers:
“They have cabins for people wishing to travel for around 200 euros per night,” Angel says.
With enough consumers on board, sail ship coffee offers vast new horizons.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Melina Devoney (she/her) is a barista and freelance writer in Los Angeles zeroed in on coffee and agriculture. She aims to amplify the voices of farmers and a diversity of perspectives within the coffee industry, and she’s happiest when running on wooded trails and dancing at concerts.
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