Menu

Ireland's sailing, boating & maritime magazine

Displaying items by tag: Alan Dukes Asia Matters

#Forum - The 2017 Maritime Commerce Forum will take place as a lunch-time event held in Dublin on Thursday 9th March. The time for the forum is from 12.30pm – 2.30pm and will be held at The Marker Hotel, Grand Canal Square. The venue is located in the capital's 'Docklands' quarter. 

The event will follow on from a series of meetings held last year to discuss opportunities for Ireland in the area of ship leasing, maritime finance and maritime taxation. Given important developments, such as Brexit, which have occurred since the last meeting, the Forum looks forward to bringing this group together to discuss key opportunities for Ireland in light of a changing global environment. To launch the Forum this year and as a guest speaker is Mr. Alan Dukes, Chairman, Asia Matters.

Alan Dukes is the Chairman and co-founder of Asia Matters. He was a member of the Dáil (lower House of the Irish Parliament) for twenty-one years and during his political career served as the Irish Minister for Agriculture, Finance, Justice and Transport and Energy and Communications.

Alan was Leader of the Fine Gael Party for three years and was Chairman of the Irish Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee. He is a former Governor of the International Monetary Fund and a former Governor of the World Bank.

In his work at Asia Matters, he is strongly committed to the importance of two way benefits in Asia Ireland bilateral trade relations.

To reserve a place at the event from the Irish Maritime Development Office, RSVP to [email protected] by this Thursday 2nd March.

Published in Ports & Shipping

About Brittany Ferries

In 1967 a farmer from Finistère in Brittany, Alexis Gourvennec, succeeded in bringing together a variety of organisations from the region to embark on an ambitious project: the aim was to open up the region, to improve its infrastructure and to enrich its people by turning to traditional partners such as Ireland and the UK. In 1972 BAI (Brittany-England-Ireland) was born.

The first cross-Channel link was inaugurated in January 1973, when a converted Israeli tank-carrier called Kerisnel left the port of Roscoff for Plymouth carrying trucks loaded with Breton vegetables such as cauliflowers and artichokes. The story, therefore, begins on 2 January 1973, 24 hours after Great Britain's entry into the Common Market (EEC).

From these humble beginnings however, Brittany Ferries as the company was re-named quickly opened up to passenger transport, then became a tour operator.

Today, Brittany Ferries has established itself as the national leader in French maritime transport: an atypical leader, under private ownership, still owned by a Breton agricultural cooperative.

Eighty five percent of the company’s passengers are British.

Key Brittany Ferries figures:

  • Turnover: €202.4 million (compared with €469m in 2019)
  • Investment in three new ships, Galicia plus two new vessels powered by cleaner LNG (liquefied natural gas) arriving in 2022 and 2023
  • Employment: 2,474 seafarers and shore staff (average high/low season)
  • Passengers: 752,102 in 2020 (compared with 2,498,354 in 2019)
  • Freight: 160,377 in 2020 (compared with 201,554 in 2019)
  • Twelve ships operating services that connect France, the United Kingdom, Ireland and Spain (non-Covid year) across 14 routes
  • Twelve ports in total: Bilbao, Santander, Portsmouth, Poole, Plymouth, Cork, Rosslare, Caen, Cherbourg, Le Havre, Saint-Malo, Roscoff
  • Tourism in Europe: 231,000 unique visitors, staying 2.6 million bed-nights in France in 2020 (compared with 857,000 unique visitors, staying 8,7 million bed-nights in 2019).