Superfast
Ferries is part of the Greek group “Attica Enterprises”, belonging to
Panagopoulos family, well known also as the former owner of company “Royal
Cruise Line”, sold 1994 for entering the Adriatic trade with high-speed ships. Superfast Ferries born in 1995, operating the link Patras - Ancona in 20 hours in
spite of the 24 of the Minoan Lines’s “Erotokritos” and of the
30 of all the other companies. Superfast gains this
way the leadership of Italy
- Greece,
despite of not very good services on board and a regular delay of one hour
minimum on the scheduled timetables. On 1998, after the arrival of two new
units for the fleet, the company started to link daily Bari,
Igoumenitsa and Patras (9
and 15 hours), a service which became very successful. Then the decision to
introduce another tonnage in the fleet: two ferries for the Adriatic routes and
the other four ordered, initially intended for serving Piraeus - Chania and Piraeus - Kos – Rhodes
link, were instead put from 2001 in the
innovative connections on Baltic Sea from Rostock
(Germany) to Sodertalje (Sweden) and Hanko (Finland) because the Greek Ministry has deniened the permission to start operations in Aegean Sea.
The first pair of ships had to start the line Ancona
- Igoumenitsa - Patras,
but, because of considerable delays of delivery (intended for mid-June and
mid-July, then for October, then again delayed to November) were the cause of
big problems for the travellers on Summer 2000.The ferries were finally
introduced on Italy – Greece services since early 2001. Despite of all, a
Scottish commission had chosen Superfast Ferries for
a new service between Scotland
and the continent (Zeebrugge). This service to Scotland was very
successful (they have no competition…), instead that the service to Sodertalje
was suspended due to unsatisfactory results. On 2002, two new ferries built at Flender Werft of Lubeck, Germany, joined
the red fleet, but the excellent Finnish pair (III and IV) was sold to TT Line
– Spirit of Tasmania. The fleet, which was formed of twelwe
ferries only for a while, was soon reduced to ten, and actually is formed of
eight units due to the sale of “Superfast II” at the
end of Summer 2003 to TT Line – Spirit of Tasmania and the sale of “Superfast I” to Grimaldi Ferries
for a service between Barcelona and Civitavecchia of
early 2004. At the end of 2004 Attica Enterprises, owner of Superfast
brand, announces the purchase of two ro/ro’s from Bore Line. Strong rumours are indicating these
two cargos on Adriatic service from January 2005, in the place of two ferries
actually sailing from Ancona: the
question is why nowadays four passenger ferries sailing from Ancona
to Patras are too much while 15 years earlier there
were four or five ferries sailing from Ancona
to Greece.
HELP
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