Stena Line has confirmed the closure of its loss-making route between Fleetwood and Larne in Northern Ireland.
The disclosure came as the ferry company agreed to acquire Liverpool (Birkenhead) to Belfast and Heysham to Belfast routes from DFDS for £40 million.
Part of the deal are four ships which include the chartered Lagan Seaways and Mersey Seaways on the Liverpool-Belfast route and freight carriers Scotia Seaways and Hibernia Seaways, all of which are now to be taken over by Stena Line.
Irish Sea area director Michael McGrath, revealing the withdrawal of the Fleetwood-Larne service at the end of the year, said:
“Since we acquired the route in 2004, we have made progress in terms of improving the quality of service to our customers but, despite all the hard work of everyone associated with the route, we have continued to trade at a significant loss, and it is not envisaged this position will change.
“The ferries to Larne route operates with older tonnage which can be problematic but investment in newer tonnage is not an option as the higher capital costs would make our losses even worse.
“No business can continue to carry such losses on an ongoing basis so there is no alternative but to close the route at the end of this year.
“The decision to close ferries to Fleetwood was taken some time ago on the basis of the current and projected performance of the route, and before the opportunity arose to buy these other routes,” he added.
“These new Irish Sea routes will complement our existing services for ferries to the UK perfectly and enable us to offer our customers even more options for ferry transport across the Irish Sea,” said McGrath.
Stena Line chief executrive Gunnar Blomdahl said: “We will continue to develop the routes and look at the capacity we will need in the future.
“During the last ten years we have invested approximately 250 million euros in our Irish Sea operations and, going forward, we will continue to invest in the development of our services between Britain and Ireland.”