The News
Nike, CMA CGM and Gemadept have launched a fully electric container barge in Vietnam that carries Nike cargo from an inland drop-off in Ho Chi Minh City to the Gemalink deep-sea terminal at Cai Mep. The 180-kilometer round trip gives Nike a river route for a leg that otherwise moves by truck, and the partners expect it to avoid about 778 tons of CO2 a year.
The barge is designed to carry more than 50,000 TEU a year. It runs on CATL batteries and recharges in about four hours on certified renewable electricity from a solar farm at Gemalink.
CMA CGM pitches it as a model for other countries and other shippers. “CMA CGM aims to build on this success to accelerate their deployment across other markets and supply chains,” said Christine Cabau, the carrier’s executive vice president of assets and operations.
The details
Trucking is Vietnam’s biggest transport polluter. The barge moves Nike’s leg onto the river, which links the inland drop-off with the deep-water berths at Cai Mep, where the largest ships call.
Road trucking produces about 80% of Vietnam’s transport emissions and up to six times the CO2 of waterways.
The World Bank approved a $107 million credit in 2024 to improve inland waterways in southern Vietnam.
Vietnam is where half of Nike’s shoes are made. Factories there made 52% of Nike Brand footwear in fiscal 2026, up from 44% a decade earlier. China’s share fell to 16% over the same years.
Cai Mep is growing fast, and Gemalink leads it. The port cluster handled about 1.94 million TEU on mainline services in the first quarter of 2026, up 13% from a year earlier.
Gemalink handled more than 523,000 TEU of that, up 17%, the most in the cluster.
At more than 50,000 TEU a year, the barge’s design volume is about a tenth of what Gemalink moves in a single quarter.
CMA CGM built the whole package. Its New Build and R&D teams designed the barge. The charging point and the solar farm sit at Gemalink, a terminal CMA CGM co-owns with Gemadept.
The two companies formed a joint venture, Green River Transportation, to run the service when they announced it in May 2025. The solar farm was then expected to produce up to 1 GWh a year.
The partners have not given a cost per container against trucking, a transit time or a count of truck trips taken off the road.
My notes
The carbon math is modest. About 778 tons a year over more than 50,000 TEU works out to under 16 kilograms of CO2 per TEU. For Nike, the bigger change is a second way to get boxes from the inland drop-off to Cai Mep, on the river, in the country that makes half its shoes.
The ocean carrier now sells the first mile. CMA CGM designed the barge, co-owns the terminal and built the power supply at the dock. I think that is what makes it repeatable: the barge, the dock and the power all sit with the company that also carries the box across the ocean.
The open question is price. Nothing published so far says what a box costs on the barge against a truck, or how long the trip takes. Until a second shipper signs on, there is no way to tell whether this works without Nike’s volume.
What’s next
CMA CGM says it wants to take the model to other markets and supply chains. It has not named a second customer, route or start date.
(Photo: CMA CGM)
