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The liquidation of the company SeaFrance Channel whets the appetites of competing operators. The subsidiary of SNCF had indeed a great market share and operating three of the ten vessels that supplied the Calais-Dover.

Now provides a new ferry crossing. Friday, the "Norman Spirit", which can carry 710 cars and 1,100 passengers, has completed its first run between Calais and Dover. It is chartered by the consortium Louis-Dreyfus Armateurs (LDA)-DFDS. The financing package for the joint venture "is not yet completed and may change," said LDA.

Initially, the "Norman Spirit" had strengthened the Dunkerque-Dover DFDS, opened in 2004. He now will leave Calais, where the crossing is the shortest – a port that is far refused to DFDS and LDA. The first company operates trains north (Dunkirk, Amsterdam). The second is present in the south, with Le Havre and Dieppe, and had tried unsuccessfully to revive the line Boulogne-sur-Mer, Dover, 2009.

There would be room for everyone

Leader on the Calais-Dover, P & O operates seven vessels, sixty trips daily, and has recently invested 360 million euros in two superferries, which have been commissioned. The first, the "Spirit of Britain", was launched over a year ago, the second in early February no fax pay day loan. Each ferry can carry 1,059 cars or 180 trucks and 200 cars.

Crisis requires SeaFrance, P & O had postponed the shutdown of ferries replaced by these vessels. The company admits to being "in an observation period with respect to competition," while observing that studies of the expansion of the port of Calais "forecast an increase of traffic in the coming years." So there would be room for everyone.

For its part, Eurotunnel, the operator of the Channel Tunnel, plays spoilsport in the sea. The company has announced its interest in obtaining the three SeaFrance ferries. Eurotunnel would lease a second time to the workers' cooperative (scop) that plan to launch the elders of the CFDT-sea SeaFrance. "We are not in the context of a coup, says Fabienne Lissak, director of communications. The elders of SeaFrance have maritime skills: we absolutely need them, our ferry business from scratch. "

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