Brittany Ferries bids for SeaFrance

News 18 Mar 2009 by WCN Editorial

While LD Lines, the original front-runner, has announced it will not make an offer for a 75% stake in SeaFrance, Brittany Ferries has put in a bid

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As recently reported on this web site (search under SeaFrance), SNCF boss Guillaume Pepy is reported to have assured the unions that SeaFrance is not for sale, and this seems to have been the final straw for LD Lines.

According to LD Lines, it was approached by SNCF to take a 75% stake in SeaFrance and in February it made a binding offer to combine its existing ferry services with SeaFrance under name “Large SeaFrance” that would be headquartered in Calais.

LD Lines now says that the real intentions of the seller are unclear, while the opposition of the unions, “who expressed fierce objections without even knowing or asking to know the content of our offer,” has made it impossible to carry on with negotiations.

Last month, SeaFrance announced 650 job cuts out of a total workforce of 1580 after recording losses of €20M last year. As previously reported the company said that cross-channel freight traffic had fallen by 23% over the past year and that it was losing €3M a month.

The unions remain opposed to any privatisation of SeaFrance and say that Brittany Ferries would cut another 400 jobs.