Seatruck Ferries which last year was acquired by Compagnie Luxembourgouise de Navigation (CLdN) has recently announced in ceasing bookings for car based passengers and motorhome customers on their Irish Sea freight routes, writes Jehan Ashmore.

Over the years, Seatruck Ferries as part of the Danish Clipper Group, provided such services to these motorists in addition to its core freight market of un-accompanied trailers on the Warrenpoint-Heysham, Dublin-Heysham and Dublin-Liverpool routes. Noting, last month Seatruck and P&O Ferries relocated to other terminals within the Irish port.

The Seatruck brand has been retained on the Irish Sea routes and joins CLdN's extensive European network among them the Dublin-Zeebrugge-Rotterdam route occasionally served by Celine and Delphine, giant ro-ro twins dubbed the 'Brexit-Busters'.

In a notice to motorist customers on the Seatruck website, they said that this was not a decision that anyone on our team took lightly. Our first priority must always be the safety of our passengers and crew.

Seatruck added that to ensure safe passage for people and cargo, we can no longer accept car and motorhome bookings and that operations will be focused solely on freight customers.

Afloat adds the Seatruck fleet involves 7 ro-ro vessels optimised to carry freight were built with a 'limited' number of cabins for 12 passengers /freight-drivers (i.e. accompanied trailers). The move away from passenger motorists, reflects a matching of services across the entire CLdN route network running between the Iberian peninsula and Sweden in Scandinavia.

CLdN's acquistion of Seatruck follows years of building their market share on the Irish Sea that equated to transporting close to 20% of the region’s seaborne cargo volumes. Last year operating profits improved and earnings for 2022 are expected to further improve as the joint impacts of COVID-19, Brexit and driver shortages are expected to accelerate growth in the un-accompanied trailer sector.

As part of consolidating both route networks, CLdN last month expanded its services between Santander, Dublin and Liverpool. This led to a new twice weekly schedule between the Spanish and Irish ports which has doubled capacity and is in line with growing demand.

The Spanish cargo for the UK market has been transhipped in Dublin Port and onto Seatruck's regular shuttle service to Liverpool. To enable these transhipments but also to accommodate growing market demand, Seatruck deployed an extra (P-class) ro-ro freight ferry, Seatruck Pennant, onto the Dublin - Liverpool route, bringing to three ships that also involves FSG class ships.

Prior to then the vessel then named Clipper Pennant was on charter to P&O's Dublin-Liverpool route as the route's third ship also running on the busy central Irish Sea corridor route. The P class vessel however was renamed in December to reflect the change of ownership between the Danish and Luxemburg based shipping companies.

Seatruck also has an eighth ro-ro freight ferry, Seatruck Panorama which asides been another P-class, is currently on charter to Stena Line on the Rosslare-Cherbourg route in tandem with ropax Stena Horizon.