The Yellow Disruption
May 68, does that ring a bell?
Then you simply have to read our interview with Pierre Mattei, CEO of Corsica ferries.
Northern Isles Ferry Tender
The procurement of the next contract to operate the Northern Isles Ferry Services (from/to Orkney and Shetland) is underway, with the publication of the contract notice.
The current contract, with Serco, finishes in October 2019.
The contract, worth an estimated £370m, will run for eight years and all routes will be tendered as a single bundle.
The Invitation To Tender documents will issue early in the new year, with a view to awarding the contract in Summer 2019.
It is not a surprise but now it is official:
- Tersan and Barreras will build Havila Kystruten’s four vessels.
- Havyard Design & Solutions will deliver the ship design and an extensive equipment package. For them it is a record contract.
- Steel cutting to begin end of year.
- Important order for Norwegian maritime cluster.
- Delivery Q3 and Q4, 2020.
Photo: Design manager Arve Leine of Havyard Design & Solutions AS, Sales Director Gisle Vinjevoll Thrane of Havyard Design & Solutions AS, chair of the board and owner Per Sævik in Havila Kystruten AS, CEO Arild Myrvoll of Havila Kystruten AS and CEO Geir Johan Bakke of Havyard Group ASA.
Stena Line added a ro-ro vessel on Rotterdam (Europoort)-Harwich. They started to charter the CLdN-owned SOMERSET.
DFDS has decided to put the (repaired) ro-ro vessel FINLANDIA SEAWAYS on its route between Norway, Zeebrugge and Immingham, instead of the side port/container vessel LYSBRIS SEAWAYS.
DFDS will add Brevik to the port rotation, in addition to the current ports of Fredrikstad and Halden. This means that DFDS will be able to offer quick transport solutions from the continent and the UK to both the east and west shores of Oslofjord.
This service will replace the current ro-ro connection between Ghent and Brevik from the middle of February 2019.
All 12 Turkish-flagged UN Ro-Ro ships will be DFDS-rebranded, and will get Turkish UNESCO world heritage sites as new names for the vessels.
This was decided after Peder Gellert and Selçuk Boztepe launched a competition in which 107 staff participated.
CEMIL BAYULGEN will be the first to be named EPHESUS SEAWAYS in connection with her lengthening and scrubber installation in December.
Møre og Romsdal county municipality has awarded the contract for the ferry connections Molde-Sekken, Solholmen-Mordalsvågen, Aukra-Hollingsholm and Sølsnes-Åfarnes, to Fjord1 ASA.
Characteristics of this Norwegian contract are:
- Ten years.
- Focus on environment with plug-in electric ferries.
- 1 January, 2020: start of Molde-Sekken, Solholmen-Mordalsvågen and Aukra-Hollingsholm.
- 1 January 2022: start of Sølsnes-Åfarnes. Two new ferries needed.
- The contract is worth NOK 2,260 billion.
As from 21 April 2019, Corsica Ferries will open a new route linking Southern France, namely Nice and Toulon, with the port of Trapani, a small city placed on the western coast of Sicily (100km from Palermo).
Reservations opened on 25 September.
The new route, according to what Corsica Ferries said in a statement, “will be operated overnight with some of its fast ferries”. This new service will take 19 hours to link France and Sicily and frequency is expected to be twice per week.
Also this month Corsica Ferries assigned to the Italy-headquartered naval architecture consultancy NAOS Ship and Boat Design the preliminary design work for the new ferries which intends to build in the near future. “An holistic investigation on the traffic characteristics and optimal vessel for the purpose has been performed by the technical department of Corsica Ferries, and then transferred to NAOS to design the corresponding ship” the Trieste-based designer said in its last newsletter
Halmstad Is Getting Ready For Stena Line
Stena Line will move the Grenå line from Varberg to Halmstad. This was confirmed in June.
Now an agreement has been signed between the municipality of Halmstad and Hallands Hammnar (Hallands Ports). The port will invest SEK 126 million into a new ferry terminal: extended marshalling area and dock, and an additional ro-ro ramp,
The first ferries will sail from Halmstad in 2020.
CEO Ole Ingrisch will retire by the end of February 2019. Ole Ingrisch became CEO at the Port of Esbjerg in 2003 and has since then been in charge of a significant development of the port. During this time, the Port of Esbjerg has grown by more than a million m2 after the establishment of the East Port. At the same time, both the top and bottom line has increased significantly. The Port of Esbjerg’s Board of Directors will now go ahead with the recruitment of a new CEO, who is expected to start on 1 March 2019.