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Workers of P&O Ferries left jobless by their employer have been urged to apply for positions with Caledonian MacBrayne (CalMac). 

CalMac's managing director Robbie Drummond said in a statement he was "shocked" by the news 800 seafarers had been thrown out by P&O yesterday without notice.

And he invited them to come and work for him instead. He said: "We at CalMac were shocked and saddened to hear about the redundancies at P&O Ferries. This is an awful situation for our many ferry industry colleagues.

"We have vacancies currently available, including a number of deck ratings and seaman pursers required to start in April, and would encourage anyone affected to apply as soon as possible."

There are currently 16 deck ratings vacancies and one spot for a seaman purser.

P&O operates UK-mainland Europe routes in addition between Scotland and Northern Ireland via Cairnryan-Larne and on the Irish Sea the Dublin-Liverpool link (see Blackpool related story). 

The National has more on the story including vacancies currently with CalMac which Afloat adds is a subsidiary of the Scottish goverment owned David MacBrayne.

Published in Ferry

About Brittany Ferries

In 1967 a farmer from Finistère in Brittany, Alexis Gourvennec, succeeded in bringing together a variety of organisations from the region to embark on an ambitious project: the aim was to open up the region, to improve its infrastructure and to enrich its people by turning to traditional partners such as Ireland and the UK. In 1972 BAI (Brittany-England-Ireland) was born.

The first cross-Channel link was inaugurated in January 1973, when a converted Israeli tank-carrier called Kerisnel left the port of Roscoff for Plymouth carrying trucks loaded with Breton vegetables such as cauliflowers and artichokes. The story, therefore, begins on 2 January 1973, 24 hours after Great Britain's entry into the Common Market (EEC).

From these humble beginnings however, Brittany Ferries as the company was re-named quickly opened up to passenger transport, then became a tour operator.

Today, Brittany Ferries has established itself as the national leader in French maritime transport: an atypical leader, under private ownership, still owned by a Breton agricultural cooperative.

Eighty five percent of the company’s passengers are British.

Key Brittany Ferries figures:

  • Turnover: €202.4 million (compared with €469m in 2019)
  • Investment in three new ships, Galicia plus two new vessels powered by cleaner LNG (liquefied natural gas) arriving in 2022 and 2023
  • Employment: 2,474 seafarers and shore staff (average high/low season)
  • Passengers: 752,102 in 2020 (compared with 2,498,354 in 2019)
  • Freight: 160,377 in 2020 (compared with 201,554 in 2019)
  • Twelve ships operating services that connect France, the United Kingdom, Ireland and Spain (non-Covid year) across 14 routes
  • Twelve ports in total: Bilbao, Santander, Portsmouth, Poole, Plymouth, Cork, Rosslare, Caen, Cherbourg, Le Havre, Saint-Malo, Roscoff
  • Tourism in Europe: 231,000 unique visitors, staying 2.6 million bed-nights in France in 2020 (compared with 857,000 unique visitors, staying 8,7 million bed-nights in 2019).