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Displaying items by tag: Lloyds Global Awards

#AwardResults - Seatruck Ferries, the Irish Sea's only operator dedicated to unaccompanied ro-ro freight, was last night piped by the post in a category at the Lloyds List Global Awards, writes Jehan Ashmore.

The ‘Company of the Year’ award went to French container operator CMA CGM. However, Seatruck were 'Highly Commended' by the judges at the event regarded as the 'Oscars' of the worldwide shipping industry.

Seatruck part of the Danish owned Clipper Group, this year celebrated its 20th anniversary. The freight ro-ro operator has a network of three routes: Dublin-Liverpool, Dublin-Heysham and Warrenpoint-Heysham and as reported only this month launched a new Dublin-Bristol route.

The Port of Bristol is a major hub for UK car imports and the new route provides manufacturers an alternative option to enter the Irish marketplace.

Afloat.ie has identified Portbury as the location used as part of the Port of Bristol that also operates Avonmouth. The vessel deployed can also be revealed as the Clipper Ranger (165 unit capacity) which operates the new service with a weekend round trip. Otherwise the ‘R’ class ro-ro would be left idle in between serving routine Dublin-Heysham sailings.

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).