2018 Newsletter Week 01 & 02

DFDS will acquire all the shares in logistics company Alphatrans Group BV.
Alphatrans is a Netherlands-based company specialised in the transport of long, wide, high and heavy loads. With 197 employees and a fleet of 720 trailers and 125 trucks, it is one of the largest flatbed trailer operators serving mainland Europe, the UK and Ireland. The company has offices in the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, the UK and Ireland and furthermore in Hungary, Romania and Portugal where DFDS is not represented.

Last year the number of passengers on the Finnish shipping company Eckerö Line grew by 3%. That is a total of 1,496,397 passengers.
More than 37,000 (+ 13%) of the passenger growth came from Estonians and about 55,000 (+ 31%) of international passengers, mainly Russians and Asians.
In turn, the number of Finnish passengers has decreased, especially towards the end of the year. An explanation is the change in the alcohol taxation.
The largest growth was for the freight division, with an 18% increase.

The total number of passengers who travelled with Viking Line in 2017 was
6,881,149, equal to +6%. That figure is the highest in Viking Line’s history.
The number of cargo units was 127,668 (131,918).
The number of passenger cars was 762,253 (682,194).

The greatest increase in passenger volumes was on the Helsinki–Tallinn route, where capacity was enhanced from April to October (fast ferry VIKING FSTR). The volume on that route was 2,341,440 (+15.7%).

In December 2017 AS Tallink Grupp transported 815,255 passengers (+6.2%). The number of cargo units increased by 10.0% to 28,315 units and the number of passenger vehicles increased by 0.6% to 87,672 units in the same comparison.

In Q4 Tallink Grupp transported 2,316,144 passengers (+4%), 97 345 freight units (14.1%) and 253,896 passenger vehicles (-0.8%).

Last year 199,657 passengers travelled with Wasaline, a rise of 8.4%
Passenger vehicles increased by 8.3%.
Freight lane meters increased by 26.6%.

Finnlines urged their customers to cancel the reservation of cargo space they have made but will not use. The cancellation needs to be made no later than two hours before the departure of the vessel, in Germany-Russia service four hours before the departure. If the reservation is cancelled later than that, or not cancelled at all, Finnlines is going to charge €150 per every no-show unit of trailers, lorries and low-loaders.
This fee is applied on all Finnlines routes, except on FinnLink and NordöLink which have their own policies.

Subsidies will help Port of Gdansk to build a new ferry berth

The Port of Gdansk Authority is one of two Polish companies to receive funds from the Connecting Europe Facility. The €20 million will be used to build a new ro-ro berth in the outer port.

The American Petroleum Institute (API) reported several large draws of barrels of United States crude oil inventories. These were much larger than what was expected by analysts.

By 2021, Norway will have 60 ferries running on batteries. Now we must find a standard solution for charging, says Edvard Sandvik, Head of the Ferry Division in Vegdirektoratet (Road Directorate).

The autonomous government of Madeira (Portugal) announced a new international public tender for a ferry service connecting the archipelago to the Portuguese mainland.
The announcement comes after the deadline for previous tenders passed without a single bid submitted.
The concession is for operating a 300-passenger ro-pax ferry between Funchal and the Portuguese mainland. The return journey should be made once a week.