Reduced crossings between France and England and partial unemployment measures for its employees. These are the decisions taken by the management of Britanny Ferries less than a week after the announcement of a British quarantine for travelers coming from France. The shipping company, of which 85% of passengers are British, has recorded 35,000 cancellations or postponements of trips since last weekend.
"Due to this drop in attendance, and as bookings for the fall are falling dramatically, Brittany Ferries announces today to consolidate its crossings," the company said in a press release on Wednesday.
The Navire Bretagne will remain docked until March
The Brittany ship, which operated the line connecting Portsmouth to Saint-Malo, will thus be decommissioned as of September 7 and should not resume service before March 2021. The Armorique ship, which was on the Roscoff-Plymouth rotation, will stop on August 31 and will not be replaced by the Pont-Aven until September 10, with three round trips per week.
The company also announces that it will have recourse to partial unemployment measures. “We cannot afford to let our ships sail with few passengers on board,” said Christophe Mathieu, managing director of the Finistère company.
"An unrivaled global health storm"
"It is essential that the next Council of Ministers be able to examine a recovery plan which takes into account the accompanying measures for the Channel (...) measures which are the only ones capable of overcoming this unparalleled global health storm", added the group's president, Jean-Marc Roué.
Based in Roscoff (Finistère), Brittany Ferries employs between 2,400 and 3,100 people depending on the season and achieved 444.2 million euros in turnover in 2019.
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