Fair Transport is based in Europe and has two cargo sail boats ferrying cargo around the North Atlantic. It is also developing the 130m Ecoliner (pictured), a type of cargo vessel propelled by a combination of high-tech sail and engine power. When it’s windy, the sails are out and the Ecoliner emits nothing.

This hybrid feature makes possible exactly the same service of speed, freight price and trustworthiness as expected from a traditional motor cargo vessel, without having to change logistic systems. It decreases the polluting emissions of ships by a minimum of 50%.

Fair Transport’s Jorne Langelaan says of the Ecoliner:

“The business plan is as good as done and we’re working very hard on the technical design. The next step is financing the project, but with the logic of this concept that can’t be a problem.”

Mott Green, founder of the Grenada Chocolate Company, a Grenada-based tree-to-bar organic chocolate cooperative, used Fair Transport’s 32m brigantine Tres Hombres to become the first chocolate maker to ship a mass quantity of chocolate sustainably – five tons of award-winning organic dark chocolate from Grenada in the West Indies to New York, Portsmouth, UK and Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

An insulated cool room was built on the ship, powered solely by wind and sun. The chocolate is very expensive — £60 for six bars — but, Chantal Coady of Rococo chocolate, who are selling it, told the Guardian:

People are not paying anywhere near the real environmental price for chocolate when they buy an ordinary bar. This is chocolate without an impact. Plus, for every bar we make, we are returning 60-70% of the retail price cost to the growers, compared to next to nothing with conventional chocolate. All the value added with this cocoa is in Grenada.

via This Chocolate Brought To You By Sail (Video) | Care2 Causes.

We are lurching towards the biggest cocoa crisis the developed world has known, largely caused by the generations of slavery and now subsistence farming in cocoa. The average age of a cocoa farmer is 73, as young men have no desire to do this work- and why would they? It’s badly paid, back-breaking work, and they would rather be in an air-conditioned office working on a computer. What can we do about this?

I am more than happy to report a light at the end of this very dark tunnel. In Grenada, the small south Caribbean island, famous for Ronald Reagan’s 1983 invasion, there is cocoa revolution taking hold in the north. The Grenada Chocolate Company has set up an Organic Cocoa Farmer’s Co-operative and is paying a price for the cocoa that makes it worth farming. Not only that, but the land is managed in a truly sustainable manner, creating healthy eco systems for the trees and wildlife, as well as nourishing the soil and protecting the land from erosion for generations to come.

As consumers we need to be aware of how we can help this process by supporting the farmers, helping them to add value to their crops and deal directly with us, not get sucked into the vagaries of the commodity markets. This is why Rococo and the Grenada Chocolate Company have created their joint venture GROCOCO…

As with special vintages of wines this chocolate is available en primeur if you buy before the bars reach the UK, at a special price. This offer will end on 21st May.

In Rococo shops they will retail at £11.95 a bar en primeur on the website £11.00, here, or 6 bars at £60.

Orders will be dispatched as soon as the chocolate arrives in London.

Normal P&P apply, or the bars can be collected in-store.

via Positive Luxury | A World Without Chocolate? | Positive Luxury.

Mott Green, partner in the GROCOCO joint venture jumped ship in the Azores, now the unique cargo of sustainable chocolate, a single harvest made into the GRU GROCOCO is on its way to the UK.

You will have a chance to meet Mott Green, dynamic force behind the Grenada Chocolate Co and Chantal Coady, founder of Rococo – to hear his story and to taste the delicious Grenada chocolate.

Please contact Annie McNicholl on 01244 895610 to book your complimentary place on MAY 10th between 3pm and 4pm at Rococo Chocolates, Chester Grosvenor.

You will have the opportunity to buy the special bars “en primeur” at a special price until the 21st May. They will be delivered to Chester as soon as they arrive in our Warehouse in London, or can be posted to your address.

A unique cuvee, the first chocolate bar to be transported by Fair Transport sail to the UK. Priced in a way to shock: you enjoy the chocolate, the producers get the money – 100% of the profits! This chocolate bar has been artisanally manufactured minutes away from the 9 acre ‘Grococo’ farm in Hermitage, St Andrews, where the cocoa was harvested in February, 2012.

The dried cocoa beans are roasted and winnowed and the chocolate made at the Grenada Chocolate Company’s solar-powered micro-factory up the road. Antique melangeurs, home-made cocoa butter presses and modern refining and tempering equipment sit side by side in this extraordinary operation. To complete the environmentally sustainable circle, all the bars left Grenada on the Tres Hombres, a 32m square-rigged wooden sailing cargo ship with no engine on March 24th, 2012. The chocolate bars quietly matured on their 6 week journey to the UK, in the solar and wind-cooled holds. The 66% cocoa recipe, delicately roasted, ground and gently conched, brings out the best qualities of the pure Grenadian Trinitario terroir: full of fruit with notes of tobacco and grass which are typical of this extraordinary varietal.

Gru Grococo is exclusively available at the Rococo shops and website. All profits from this limited edition bar will be put back to support the radical organic cocoa co-operative in Grenada. As with special vintages of wines this chocolate is available en primeur if you buy before the bars reach the UK, at a special price.

This offer will end on 21st May. In Rococo shops they will retail at £11.95 a bar en primeur on the website £11.00 (Or 6 bars at £60 on this page) Orders will be despatched as soon as the chocolate arrives in London. Normal P&P apply. Alternatively, call 020 8761 8456 x 211 to arrange collection in one of our London stores.

via Gru Grococo: A joint venture – Rococo and the Grenada Chocolate Co : Bars.