What will it take for wind propulsion to move from demonstration to global deployment?
In this episode of HANSA.newscast, I’m joined by Emmanuel Schalit,CEO of OceanWings, about the engineering, digital intelligence, and supply chain design behind what he positions as one of the most scalable wind propulsion technologies on the market: two-element wing sails.
At the center of the discussion is Canopée, a RoRo vessel that transports rocket components across the Atlantic for the European Space Agency (ESA). The vessel has been in operation for over two years with four OceanWings installed – and the results are concrete: 35% average savings in fuel and emissions, benchmarked against seven months of operation without the sails on the exact same route.
Yet the real performance gains are no longer coming from hardware alone.
According to Emmanuel, the next leap will come from the use of AI in performance optimization and control logic. Rather than redesigning the wing structure itself, OceanWings is focused on how the sails interact dynamically with the vessel’s other core systems — rudder, hull, and propeller — in real time. The objective: to increase average fuel savings per wing from 1.3 to over 2 tons per day, through system-wide coordination and continuous algorithmic refinement.
The conversation also covers industrial scaling:
OceanWings uses the supply chain of the offshore wind industry, enabling rapid production and installation close to major shipyards in Asia. Like wind turbines, the components are shipped flat-packed and assembled on-site, making the process faster, cheaper, and easier to replicate.
