Cobelfret Ferries buys Ferryways

[frederik]

Hi,

The Belgian media reports that the Belgian shipping company Cobelfret Ferries has purchased Ferryways from Ostend (Belgium). The price is not mentioned.
Cobelfret Ferries operates from several ports (like Zeebrugge, Flushing, Rotterdam, Purfleet, Killingholme,..). Cobelfret bought last year also Dartline.
Ferryways operates from Ostend to Ipswich, Immingham and Tilbury.
The news is just confirmed by Ferryways.

greetz,

frederik

[CedricH]

Hi,

do you know if they have announced changes to the ferryways operations?

Regards
Cedric

[frederik]

Hi,

According to the local media shipping company Ferryways is facing large financial problems. All operations in the port of Ostend and in the British ports (Tilbury, Ipswich and Immingham) are shut down.
According to a union-spokesman the company will present a bankruptcy petition tomorrow, June 14 2007.
Ferryways is since this month owned by the Belgian shipping company Cobelfret.

greetz,

frederik

[Joe Watson]

That explains why Anglian Way made a sudden U-Turn just before 1600hrs on 13/06/07 whilst bound for Ipswich.

[frederik]

Hi joe_wat,

According to several sources all the Ferryways-vessels will return to the port of Ostend where they will be laid-up.

greetz,

frederik

[exferryman]

One of Cobelfret's group companys bought out Ferryway's shareholders on 01/06/07.  
They transferred the main assets of Ferryways, i.e the Ro-Ro ferries Flanders Way, Anglian Way, Ipswich Way and Ostend Way, to another a subsidiary company of Cobelfret.

On 14/06/07 staff at Ferryways UK were informed by Administrators appointed by the UK Directors that the company was insolvent and all staff were dismissed without payment of salaries owed or redundancy payments.

It is expected that staff at Ferryways NV in Ostend will suffer a similar fate today.

In the meantime, the Ostend ferry stevedoring company, Searoad Stevedores, which has exclusive rights to the 'Ferryway's ro-ro berths in Ostend, and which was also bought by a member of the Cobelfret group on 1st June, is still trading but it is not expected that Cobelfret will allow any other ferry operator to use the berths.

[CHIPS]

Does anybody know what happens next, will Cobelfret continue using all the UK ports (Tilbury, Ipswich & Immmingham) and basically run the old Ferryways routes with their name? Any idea how long this will take to sort out?

[frederik]

Hi,

Nobody knows what will happen. Here in Zeebrugge we refuse to load/discharge the Ferryways-vessels. According to the media Ferryways will present a bankruptcy petition today. Everybody is waiting for a official statement from Ferryways and/or Cobelfret.

greetz,

frederik

[exferryman]

They will probably resume the Ipswich service which had always operated profitably for Ferryways.  Proximity of Tilbury and Immingham to their existing services, coupled with spare capacity, would suggest that these will not.

[CedricH]

Hi,

nobody knows where the financial problems came from in the first place.
They were a healthy company and were even looking out for new vessels at a cost of

[exferryman]

Workers think it is Cobelfret who have closed the tabs and just bought Ferryways to get rid of the competition.

tsk, tsk, who could think such a terrible thing ??

[Jordan Seifarth]

I'm a truck driver and always pull trailers out of Killingholme or sometimes Felixstowe that come across from Rotterdam on either the Cobelfret or Norfolk Line ships. Several of my friends pull for a Belgian ferry freight company who until this week almost entirely sent their trailers to England via Ferryways and spent the latter part of the week stranded at Immingham/Ipswich etc with no work. The word is that Ferryways had a lot of financial trouble because in a recent spell of bad weather, a lot of trailers were lost/damaged in the North Sea and for whatever reason, the insurance isn't covering it. I really dont know wether thats true or not though.

[frederik]

Hi Jordan,

There where indeed several trailers damaged on the Humber Way last March. The Humber Way came into big problems due to gale wind force and bad lashing of the cargo. The Humber Way came from Ostend and was bound for Immingham.
http://www.shipspotting.com/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=2721&forum=2
The problem is that in Ostend the ships crew has to do the lashing, not dockers like it should be. And they do it sometimes very fast, the result was big problems.
Maybe this incident will cost Ferryways very much money but what I dont understand is that a company like Cobelfret didn't know about the financial difficulties.

The bankruptcy petition that was presented today at the trade court in Bruges is refused. Ferryways restart Monday with sailings.

greetz,

frederik

[Jordan Seifarth]

Hi Frederik,

I think a lot of Ferryways customers will be very reluctant to send their trailers that way now due to the chaos it caused this week. On another note, a major selling point about the Ferryways sevice into Immingham was the fact that the ships arrive in the late afternoon so from the truck driver/transport company point of view this can be a good thing, because you normally arive back at the port in the afternoon and then you are able to collect your trailer then for the next day. With Cobelfret, Norfolk Line etc the ship arrives at say 8am and the last trailer sometimes comes off as late as 1pm, by which time there isnt enough time to drive to the destination before the place shuts and that can quite often leave us truck drivers chasing impossible times and sitting around all morning waiting for a trailer and then getting somewhere later in the afternoon and waiting for the place to open again the next morning, which is very bad for business because ofcourse if the wheels aren't turning, you aren't earning. My friends who collected trailers from Ferryways were until this week often clearing 800-900kms a week more than we who collect from Cobelfret/Norfolk Line etc and this is purely because of turnaround times due to the times the vessels arrive in port.

[frederik]

Hi Jordan,

Today I have noticed that a lot of Ferryways-customers have send their trailers/containers to Zeebrugge. I'm a docker, working for Sea-Ro Terminal and we load/discharge the Cobelfret-vessels here in Zeebrugge.
And what u say about turnaround times. Yes, u are right. I'm now 2 years working as a docker but before I was a truckdriver, mostly for Huktra UK. The time u have to wait to collect a trailer/container is lost time. Now, with the 2 Humber-max ships (Pauline and Yasmine), can u wait very long. The discharge operations in Zeebrugge starts at 9am and the last trailer leave the ship around 1pm. So, if u arrive around 10am...
With Ferryways u haven't that problem often.

greetz,

frederik