Folkestone seamen wait for ferry cash
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. Out-of-work seafarers intent on setting up a freight-only service on the Folkestone-Boulogne route will know this week whether they will receive the financial backing needed to get the project started.
The new company, Folkestone-Boulogne Ferries, is asking its banks to come up with the £2m needed to set up the freight service with a chartered vessel Marine Evangeline. Company spokesman Bert Wall says he wants the service to begin within two months: the ship has room for 40 CVs.
Wall, and the 160 seafarers backing his company, were made redundant when Sealink Stena Line closed its FolkestoneBoulogne route.
Folkestone-Boulogne Ferries originally intended to run a mixed passenger and freight service. This plan was dropped after docking facilities at Folkestone proved too difficult, but Wall hopes to introduce a multipurpose ferry service.
El A ferry service set up by Ulster hauliers five months ago is to take on a larger vessel this month to keep up with demand. Norse Irish Ferries sails between Belfast and Liverpool daily. It is 45% funded by a consortium of 25 Northern Ireland transport firms and about 30% of its business comes from shareholders, says chief executive Peter Dobbs.
One of its ships carries 150 trucks; the other takes 108, but is over-subscribed and will be replaced with a larger ferry,
Logistics operates a 23,000m2 warehouse with a workforce of 450 handling fast-moving groceries, frozen, chilled and ambient goods.
About 50 redundancies have been made in Tesco's in-house distribution operation. When the job losses were announced in February (CM 20-26 February), Tesco said they were required to improve productivity in its eight in-house distribution centres.