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Displaying items by tag: 3rd Flinter Acquired

#Ports&Shipping - Arklow Dale is the first cargoship to bear the name for the Co. Wicklow based shipowner which acquired the secondhand tonnage that forms as the third D class sister, writes Jehan Ashmore.

Afloat had been trawling through the mixed Irish-Dutch flagged fleet list of Arklow Shipping yesterday. Coincidently, on the same day is when that the newly acquired cargoship was included in the fleet list of more than 50 ships.   

The 11,048dwt cargoship is the former Flinter Arctic that served a career with the Dutch operator, Flinter Group B.V. which became bankrupt in 2016. Trading now as Arklow Dale, the double-hold cargoship is equipped with a deck-mounted gantry crane fitted with two derricks. The 132m cargoship has an Ice Class Finnish 1A notation and is currently underway in the Baltic Sea from Gdynia, Poland and bound for Lulea in Sweden.

Arklow Dale joins the other D class pair of former Flinter sisters that were previously disposed through auction to ASL and sail as Arklow Dawn and Arklow Day.  The sisters were all built by German shipbuilder, Ferus Smit whose Dutch yard in Westerbroek launched Flinter Arctic in 2010. As for the remaining sisters they were completed in the following year. The yard in recent years has seen the construction of C class cargoships for ASL. 

The newly acquired fleetmember's main engine is a 3 MAK 8M32 4000kW with gearbox. A controllable pitch propeller delivers about 14 knots. All of the D class are Irish flagged and registered in the owners homeport whereas Dutch based divison Arklow Shipping Nederland B.V. have a smaller fleet registered in Rotterdam.

Published in Arklow Shipping

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).