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Displaying items by tag: Proposed Ferry

A €15m tourist and commuter ferry network plan proposed for Cork Harbour, which will create up to 70 jobs, are to be lodged with local authorities shortly.

A group of private investors, reports the Irish Examiner, are aiming to have the tourist ferry service operational by next year and the commuter service up and running in 2022.

The new service will serve communities all along the harbour shores, including Crosshaven, Aghada, Cobh, Monkstown, Passage West, and on up to Blackrock, the new Docklands, and onto the city quays.

There are even plans to have a docking location at the rear of Páirc Uí Chaoimh, to bring passengers to and from sporting and concert events.

Adian Coffey, who leads the investors, Harbour Cat Ferries, said they intend to build pontoons in those areas to serve passengers and to purchase four 35m-long Catamarans, Enviro-Cat 35s, which will bring people around the harbour.

He said it was their intention to purchase two for the tourist business and two to operate the commuter routes.

For more on this ferry development click here.

Published in Cork Harbour

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).