Finnlines expands its fleet
Finnlines Plc’s fully owned Swedish subsidiary, Rederi Aktiebolaget Nordö-Link, has on Friday 26 of January 2018 purchased from the Grimaldi Group a Star class passenger-freight vessel, MS Europalink, in accordance with the purchase agreement signed earlier, the company said in its press release.
MS Europalink will be fitted with exhaust gas scrubbers in mid-March and she will sail under Swedish flag. MS Europalink will start on our Malmö–Travemünde route.
The vessel will undergo refurbishment in the public areas and, thus, can even better meet the passengers’ needs. This modern ro-pax vessel was built at Fincantieri Shipyard in Italy in 2007, and it has a capacity of 4,215 lane metres and 554 passengers.
Finnlines’ lengthening programme is progressing well according to the plan and, now, the second vessel, MS Finnwave, is 30 metres longer. The capacity of the vessel is now 4,192 lane metres, which means that the lengthening added 1,000 lane metres. MS Finnwave has returned to the normal traffic on Uusikaupunki/Turku–Travemünde route. By the end of May, a further two vessels, MS Finnsun and MS Finnsky, will be lengthened. Finnlines has an option to lengthen two additional vessels, which have not yet been decided.
“We respond to the growing demand by increasing our vessels’ cargo and passenger capacity. This enables us to utilize our bigger tonnage more efficiently and, also serve our customers even better. In addition to improving the customer service, we continue investing in sustainable development – by increasing our energy efficiency and reducing emissions per transported tonne,” says Tom Pippingsköld, CFO of Finnlines.
Finnlines is a leading shipping operator of ro-ro and passenger services in the Baltic Sea and the North Sea. The Company is a part of the Grimaldi Group, one of the world’s largest operators of ro-ro vessels and the largest operator of the Motorways of the Sea in Europe for both passengers and freight. This affiliation enables Finnlines to offer liner services to and from any destination in the Mediterranean, West Africa as well as the Atlantic coast of both North and South America.
