Sails manufacturer CWS raises €12 million

Sails manufacturer CWS is to equip the shipping company Windcoop’s future cargo ship. The company has just raised €12 million to build up its production capacity and become fully operational.

The wind is blowing in the right direction in Saint-Nazaire. At least for the Paris-based company Computed Wing Sail (CWS), which has set up at the foot of the industrial city’s bridge in the summer of 2024. The start-up, which develops rigid sails for cargo ships, has found an initial shipping company, Breton-based Windcoop, willing to install its wings on its vessel. Bolstered by this commitment, the company has just raised €12 million, including €6 million in capital from Supernova Invest and two Bpifrance-labelled funds: the Maritime Decarbonisation Fund and the SPI Fund. The rest of the amount raised came from convertible bonds (loan).

On the road to production

This amount will allow CWS to build its production capacity. “We currently have 40 employees, two-thirds of them in Paris and one-third in our production plant in Saint-Nazaire. The aim is to employ 60 people by the end of 2026, equally divided between the two sites,” says Bruno Toubiana, co-founder of the company. On completion of this operation, he will assume the position of chief financial officer and leave his place as managing director to Laurent Schneider-Maunoury. Laurent Schneider-Maunoury has worked at several industrial groups (Safran, Daher) and was chairman of Naval Energies, a French company specialising in renewable marine energy, since 2017.

An asymmetric wing that changes course

This fundraising takes place in a context of complex industrialisation for sailing technologies, with orders from shipowners generally less numerous than expected. And it is not the recent positioning of the IMO, which delayed its text to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by a year, that has revived the sector. “We come after other technologies on the market, but we are the only ones with an asymmetric wing optimised for all wind directions,” Bruno Toubiana adds. Indeed, CWS has a patent on its folding mechanism that allows the wing to be reversed, allowing efficient course changes.

A first welcome order

This argument convinced Windcoop for its first vessel, which will be launched in 2027 and will have three wings of 350 m². “This first order was essential. For investment in a complex product, financiers require a system to be sold under real conditions first,” Bruno Toubiana explains. Although it is difficult to predict the overall efficiency of the system, as it depends on the number of wings and the size of the freighter, CWS is aiming for fuel savings of more than 50% for this first 91-metre vessel.

Accelerating commercial development

Although the company can already count on a first ship owner, the industrial start-up also wants to use this fundraising to accelerate its commercial development. CWS will install a first full-scale demonstration model in Montoir-de-Bretagne in early 2026 to show more efficiency data to potential customers.

In particular, it will be the second giant sail, alongside that of Chantiers de l’Atlantique’s SolidSail, that will fly in the sky over Saint-Nazaire.

Source: Benjamin Robert for Journal des Entreprises.
Image: Windcoop’s ship with CWS sails (Windcoop).

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