bound4blue Receives Third-Party Assessed Average Daily Fuel Savings Consistent With Projections

bound4blue has underlined the business case for adopting eSAIL wind propulsion technology, with today’s release of BVS assessed operational fuel savings on the Louis Dreyfus Armateurs (LDA) owned Ville de Bordeaux Ro-Ro.

The vessel, chartered by Airbus, had three 22-meter bound4blue suction sail units installed in 2024. BVS assessed the savings over a year, showing an average daily fuel saving of 1.7 metric tons, with peak savings of as much as 5.4 metric tons per day.

These savings are consistent with bound4blue’s initial projections and with the results obtained by LDA using its own methodology, which was grounded in real-time measurements—including fuel consumption data—and incorporated actual weather conditions to ensure accuracy.

The savings reported on the vessel, which transports Airbus subassemblies from Europe to the United States, were achieved without relying on weather routing and did not account for the significant regulatory advantages of adopting wind propulsion.

eSAILs generate significant lift, producing greater propulsive force, and enabling significantly greater savings, per square meter than competing technologies like rigid sails. This provides equivalent savings with six to seven times less surface area, allowing for more compact installations, with reduced deck space requirements, lighter weight, and easier retrofitting across a wide range