The former SeaFrance vessels 'Berlioz' and 'Rodin' are expected to resume service in the Dover Strait in mid-August under the colours of new operator My Ferry Link.
My Ferry Link is the employee cooperative formed by former SeaFrance employees which has been chosen to operate the vessels by their new owner, Channel tunnel operator Eurotunnel.
There had been some support among some former SeaFrance employees for keeping the company under the SeaFrance name but My Ferry Link chief executive, Jean-Michel Giguet, a former chief executive of Brittany Ferries, said that it had finally been decided that, as a new company, the cooperative should have a new name.
"It was logical to have a new name in so far as it is a completely new company, with new management, new ambitions and a new quality of service," he told French news agency AFP.
He said that the plan was to bring the 'Berlioz' and 'Rodin' back into service between Dover and Calais in mid-August, subject to completion of the maintenance work currently being carried out on them by ARNO-Dunkerque at Dunkirk.
The two vessels would begin by offering four round trips daily, increasing to five or six if there was good customer response, he said.
The company has already recruited 120 people and is planning to take on 520 employees altogether in France over the next few months and 70 in Britain.
Eurotunnel's three owned vessels – the 'Berlioz', 'Rodin' and the freight-only ferry 'Nord-Pas de Calais' – were acquired by Eurotunnel in early June for €65 million (USD 80 million) along with other former SeaFrance commercial assets.
They were put up for sale by the Paris court of commerce which put SeaFrance into liquidation in January after rejecting a direct but only partly financed bid for the company from the employee cooperative.
The three vessels themselves have been out of service since mid-November when the company took them out of operation on safety grounds, apparently after a union official threatened to sink them rather than allow them to be acquired by would-be buyer DFDS of Denmark.
The attempt to bring them back into service could run into legal opposition, however, on the grounds that their ownership by Eurotunnel is seen as potentially running counter to competition legislation.
Britain's Office of Fair Trading has already said that it is investigating the project to see if it poses competition problems on the Dover Strait transport market, while rival operator DFDS said recently that it had alerted the European Commission and national competition authorities to its concerns over Eurotunnel's involvement in the project.
Andrew Spurrier
Image Source: Remi Jouan