- An excess investments worth £1 billion has been announced in the UK shipping sector.
- The investments are for the development new ships and port facilities.
- The new deal covers a range of national and international ferry links.
A whooping new business deal is in place in the UK shipping industry. This new set of investments which is worth 1 billion pounds was recently announced by the Discover Ferries, an organisation which represents ten of the companies which serve the British market. The deal is to develop new ships and existing port facilities along the most prestigious national and international ferry links of UK, which covers a range of freight and passenger RoRo and RoPax services.
Here is a rundown of what the ferry companies actually have in store in the run up to 2022. The Red Funnel Isle of Wight Ferries spent £7 million last September, on a new high speed catamaran Red Jet 7 which will come into service between Southampton and West Cowes in early July this year. The company is also undertaking a £3+ million refurbishment of its RoPax ship Red Eagle to be completed before the Easter holiday and the company has also given the green light to a £10.5 million investment to extend and relocate its East Cowes ferry terminal. Phase 1 will be completed by the summer with the final phase delivered by 2020.
Staying with the island, new for summer 2018 is Wightlink’s Victoria of Wight, a new car ferry operating between Portsmouth and Fishbourne on the Isle of Wight, which is powered by hybrid energy, meant to minimise the ship’s environmental impact. New double deck loading ramps have also been built at Wightlink’s ports at Portsmouth and Fishbourne as part of the £45 million investment, for faster loading and unloading times.
First LNG passenger ferry of UK
Caledonian MacBrayne, which have won the prestigious ‘Project Ecoship’ award last year for its eco-friendly fuel drive, is introducing the UK’s first liquefied natural gas (LNG) passenger ferry, MV Glen Sannox later this year. The 102-metre, RoRo ferry, is designed to carry 127 cars or 16 HGVs or a combination of both and up to 1,000 passengers whilst operating on LNG and marine gas oil (MGO), which will help in meeting the ambitious Scottish Government emission targets.
A £30 million investment by the Caledonian Maritime Assets Limited (CMAL), with support from Transport Scotland, North Ayrshire Council, Strathclyde Partnership for Transport and Coastal Communities Fund.is set to transform the ferry service at the port of Brodick in the Clyde island of Arran.
An investment of £175 million in thee Portsmouth – Caen route seeks to develop a state-of-the-art new ship the Honfleur by Brittany Ferries’ in March 2019.This LNG powered ship will be built in the Flensburger Schiffbau-Gesellshaft shipyard in Germany.
New RoPax Vessels and Ferry Services
Stena Line ordered 4 new RoPax ships from the AVIC Shipyard in China, last year to service its UK – Irish routes with Stena having an option on a further four vessels as part of the overall contract. The vessels will be 50% larger than today’s standard RoPax vessels and this significant investment will see a continuation of Stena Line’s RoPax concept which mixes freight and passengers as part of its operational business model. The new ferries will be amongst the most energy efficient in the world with significantly lower emissions compared to similar tonnage.
In 2017, Stena Line completed a multi-million pound investment package to acquire the Superfast VIIand Superfast VIII ferries which operate on its Belfast-Cairnryan route as part of the company’s development plans. The vessels had been operating under a charter contract agreement with AS Tallink Grupp before Stena Line took over formal ownership of the vessels in December 2017.
New Irish Vessels On The Horizon
The Irish Ferries have new plans in store to develop 2 new vessels – an unnamed ship, the largest cruise ferry in the world working in tandem with MV Ulysses (which replaces will MV Epsilon) and £128 million cruise ship W.B. Yeats (which has 1885 passenger capacity and 55000 tonnes cargo carrying capacity) by mid-September 2018. Of the 2 ships on the loop, the latter will charter the UK-Ireland route and the Ireland-France route already chartered by the Oscar Wilde vessel and thereby easing the pressure in the interim period before the largest cruise ferry comes into effect.
UK’s largest commercial passenger fleet
MBNA Thames Clippers, the largest commercial passenger fleet of UK, introduced two new boats last year, the Mercury Clipper and Jupiter Clipper. This was a £6.3 million investment to meet demand as the growing business carried over 4.1 million commuters and visitors around London on the River Thames in 2017 alone. This ship will ferry 6 million passengers by 2020
MBNA Thames Clippers started serving a new pier at Battersea Power Station on 1 November 2017, taking the total number of piers MBNA Thames Clippers serves to 22. The pier is the latest addition to London’s most popular river route RB6, which has seen an increase of 58% commuter traffic in two years and the company proposes to expand services to Royal Wharf, New Providence Wharf and Trinity Buoy Wharf as part of their continued investment in the river transport network. Commenting on the investment statistics, Emma Batchelor, Director of Discover Ferries, commented:
“More than 39 million passenger journeys are made by ferry to UK islands, the Isle of Man and Ireland, France, Spain and Holland, and those sustained numbers are enabling ferry operators to invest with confidence in new ships and new routes. Ferry travel today is transformed compared to a decade ago and enjoys a loyal following of travellers who value comfort and space. In the next four years the scale of this investment will see another step change in service for travellers.”
Better port facilities & transport system
New RoRo ferry terminals are on the making at Tilbury 2. Two newly refurbished ships was returned last year on the Hull-Zeebrugge service by P&O Ferries. Now it has introduced VIP service for freight drivers traveling between UK and Northern Europe.
In recent years, millions of pounds have been spent on a number of important projects which include lengthening Berth 2; removing the ‘floating dock jetty’ to improve navigation; dredging to increase depths for bigger cargo ships and moving HMS Bristol to increase the turning circle for larger vessels.
A centralised customer information service is introduced in the Red Funnel which will make it more customer friendly giving them timely travel information across all media platforms. The Hogia Systems which is used to build this service has also integrated live public transport information which informs the travellers about railways and bus connections.
These improvements will make way for a holistic port facilities.
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Source: Handy Shipping Guide
