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To get everyone to drink coffee! Coffee bean transportation will return to the era of great navigation?!

Published: 2026-04-07 Author: World Gafei

Last Updated: 2026/04/07, Since the epidemic of COVID-19, people's awareness of environmental protection has become stronger and stronger. Even drinking a cup of coffee begins to pay attention to whether it is organic, whether it is environmentally friendly, and whether the process from raw beans to coffee liquid has excessive carbon emissions. It is well known that most coffee beans consume fuel, while coffee producers and consumers

Since the epidemic of COVID-19, people's awareness of environmental protection has become stronger and stronger. Even drinking a cup of coffee begins to pay attention to whether it is organic, whether it is environmentally friendly, and whether the process from raw beans to coffee liquid has excessive carbon emissions. It is well known that coffee beans use fuel consumption, and coffee producers and coffee consumers are mostly across the sea, which means that thousands of tons of coffee beans are transported, whether by aircraft or freighters, using fossil fuels as a source of power.

However, that is changing. NEW DAWN TRADERS, an experimental British company, thinks they have a solution. They have abandoned fossil fuel engines and used sailing boats to transport coffee beans.

The company was founded in 2013 and began to use ecologically conscious international freight transportation as early as its inception. According to Atlas Obscura, they do not have a boat of their own yet, and the boat they use today is leased. The company leases two sailing ships a year from the UK to Portugal, Costa Rica, the Caribbean and Colombia to transport a variety of goods, including honey, wine, rice, olive oil and, of course, raw coffee beans.

In one of the transatlantic shipments, NEW DAWN TRADERS set sail from Las Brisas, Tolima, Colombia, carrying a sailboat of raw coffee beans. It took nearly five months to sail about 7000 nautical miles across the ocean to transport raw coffee beans back to a small port in Cornwall, England.

We have to admit that without the power source of modern technology, transportation takes a lot longer. However, the oldest form of wind-powered shipping, which reduces carbon emissions as much as possible, is also proud of the entire transport team.

The Coffee Workshop reported last year that Caf é William, a Canadian coffee roaster, and its partner Sailcargo had built a zero-emission sail ship, which is scheduled to be operational in 2023.

Sail freighters used to be beautiful, and in the 19th century, Europeans made a number of technological improvements to sailing ships in order to bring the freshest tea back to Europe. It even spawned a race to test speed. Once, the Cutty Sark sailed from Hankou, loaded with Chinese tea, and took 109 days to arrive in London, England. The Cutty Sark is the last flying scissors sailboat made in England and the fastest one.

Then, with the completion of the Suez Canal in 1869, steam-powered ships sailed faster and their sailors did not need special training, so the status of sailing was replaced by steamships.

Up to now, shipping ships pollute the environment seriously. In order to achieve the goal of carbon neutralization as soon as possible, some enterprises begin to focus on sailboat shipping trade. Although not everything is plain sailing at the beginning, sailing may not replace today's traditional transport. However, with the development of science and technology, some people still think of transporting coffee beans in the same way as they did more than 200 years ago, which sounds unrealistic, but it may be interesting for those who miss the era of great navigation.

Photo Source: Internet

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