Ville de Bordeaux
| Company type | Roll-on/roll-off ferry |
|---|---|
| Industry | Maritime freight transport |
| Founded | July 30, 2003 |
| Headquarters | France, Norway |
| Products | Transport of Airbus aircraft components |
| Owner | Louis Dreyfus Armateurs, Leif Höegh & Co |
The Ville de Bordeaux was initially developed as a dedicated carrier for transporting parts of the Airbus A380. Today, its main function is to ferry components of the Airbus A320 across transatlantic routes between Europe and the USA. To improve environmental performance and lower operational expenses, the vessel has undergone retrofitting with advanced technologies from Seawing and eSAILs, both designed to minimize carbon emissions in maritime freight transport.
A380 production
Airbus operates as a European holding company with manufacturing facilities spread across France, Germany, Spain, and the UK, resulting in a widely distributed production system. While earlier models relied on air transport using the custom-built A300-600ST Beluga, the oversized parts of the A380 exceeded this aircraft’s capacity. Consequently, Airbus retained its multiple plants and shifted to sea and road transportation for final assembly in Toulouse, maintaining a production rate of four A380 aircraft monthly.[1]
Design
Conceived by Deltamarin, the Ville de Bordeaux is a Roll-on/roll-off ferry constructed at the Jinling shipyard in Nanjing, China. Built with an investment of $30 million, it was launched on 30 July 2003. This vessel heads a trio of RORO ships leased to Airbus, including City of Hamburg (2008) and Ciudad de Cadiz (2009).[2]
Ownership is shared between France’s Louis Dreyfus Armateurs and Norwegian firm Leif Höegh & Co, with operations managed by their respective subsidiaries Fret and CETAM under a lease agreement spanning 20 years plus an additional 10 years for Airbus. The vessel commenced service on 10 June 2004.[3][4]
In 2021, the Ville de Bordeaux was outfitted with a 500m² automated kite system named 'Seawing', developed by AirSeas—an Airbus subsidiary—to harness wind propulsion. This upgrade initiated a six-month trial period at sea starting early 2022.[5]
By March 2024, the vessel had been equipped with eSAILs technology aimed at lowering Airbus’s shipping carbon footprint. Following installation, a six-month monitoring phase was conducted to evaluate performance.[6]
Operations
The process begins at the Airbus Hamburg Finkenwerder facility located on the River Elbe, where front and rear fuselage sections are loaded onto the ship before it departs for the United Kingdom. Wings, produced at Filton (Bristol) and Broughton, Flintshire (North Wales), are transported by barge to the docks at Mostyn for shipment. In Saint-Nazaire, France, the vessel replaces the Hamburg fuselage parts with larger assembled components, including certain nose sections, and then unloads cargo in Bordeaux. Subsequently, belly and tail sections are picked up from Construcciones Aeronáuticas SA in Cádiz, southern Spain, and delivered to Bordeaux. From there, A380 parts are moved by barge to Langon, Gironde, followed by transport via oversized road convoys along the Itinéraire à Grand Gabarit route to the assembly facility in Toulouse.
Once assembly is complete, the aircraft are flown back to Hamburg Finkenwerder Airport for final interior outfitting and painting.
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