The Gentleman Magazine Issue 12 | December 2018 | Page 62

GROUPE RENAULT PARTNERS WITH NEOLINE
During the Assises de la Mer maritime conference, Groupe
Renault announced the signing of a three-year partnership
with Nantes start-up NEOLINE to develop a more sustainable
maritime transport service powered by wind, and to contribute
to the environmental management of its logistics chain while
nearly 60 per cent of the Group's parts and vehicles are
transported by sea.
Jean-Philippe
Hermine,
Vice
President,
Strategic
Environmental Planning Groupe Renault, stated: “Groupe
Renault’s objective is to reduce the environmental impact
of each vehicle throughout its entire life cycle, from parts
transportation up to delivery and end-of-life processing. In
the context of our strategy to explore new sustainable mobility
solutions and to continue along the road to reducing our
carbon footprint, the solution designed by NEOLINE, which
combines energy efficiency and operational relevance, has
truly captured our attention”.
Jean-François Salles, Alliance Global Director, Production
Control, added: “The partnership with NEOLINE is the latest
example of our supply chain’s commitment to reduce its
carbon footprint by 6 per cent between 2016 and 2022. For
nearly 10 years, we have been working to identify the most
environmentally sustainable solutions: for example, optimizing
the fill rates of the containers and trucks, producing eco-friendly
packaging, and implementing a multimodal system. We are
also developing more initiatives, such as the use of natural gas
transportation between parts suppliers and production sites,
the evaluation of transporters’ environmental performance, the
modernisation of truck fleets, and of course the optimization
of our flows to reduce the number of kilometres travelled and
to eliminate empty trips”.
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Jean Zanuttini, CEO of NEOLINE, declared: “We are especially
pleased that Groupe Renault, a key player in accessible and
sustainable mobility for all, is the first partner to join us on
board our journey by trusting in NEOLINE’s maritime
transport solution. Considering that the traditional sea freight
accounts for nearly 3 per cent of CO2 emissions in Europe*,
NEOLINE aims to build an innovative French solution to
address a global environmental challenge while remaining
within an industrial and competitive framework, with the
support from its partners.”
To create a maritime transport solution capable of meeting
the environmental challenges of our time, NEOLINE is
developing its industrial-scale wind-powered freight services
that are cleaner, customized and competitive, in response to
the logistical needs of shippers. Led by a team of maritime
professionals, this ship owner project has culminated in the
design of a commercial demo with the potential to reduce
CO2 emissions by up to 90 per cent through the use of wind
power primarily, combined with a cost-cutting speed and
optimized energy mix, compared to a traditional cargo ship
on an equivalent route. The demo, a 136-metre ro-ro ship and
4200 square metres of sail area, features an innovative blend
of technical solutions borrowed from the maritime transport
industry, as well as from competitive sailing, in order to make
transport more logistically and economically proficient, while
also setting the bar for energy efficiency.
The objective is to build two ships based on this model and to
commission the vessels by 2020-2021 on a pilot route joining
Saint-Nazaire, the U.S. Eastern seaboard and Saint-Pierre &
Miquelon.
, Security in Motion”