Ferry could still stop in Lerwick

Hopes of persuading Faroese ferry company Smyril Line to continue sailing to Shetland were raised this week after company managers published a provisional timetable for next year that includes Lerwick as a port of call.

The plan, which has yet to be approved by shareholders, would see the Norröna call into Lerwick twice a week and provide Shetland with direct sailings to and from Hanstholm and Tórshavn.

But the ferry would no longer call into Lerwick en route to Bergen. Instead she would call at Scrabster.

If the compromise solution is accepted by shareholders, most of whom are based in Faroe and Iceland, it would bring an end to an acrimonious legal dispute between Shetland Development Trust and Smyril Line which followed the publication of plans to cut Lerwick out of the Norröna's sailing schedule next year.

Last month the development trust - which has a 19 per cent stake in Smyril Line - unsuccessfully tried to obtain an injunction from the commercial court in Tórshavn to stop the plans.

The trust claims that a shareholder agreement to invest £4.2m in Smyril Line signed in 2001 means that the company is contractually bound to keep calling into Lerwick until the end of 2007.

Denmark's appeal court in Copenhagen recently backed Smyril's position and a final decision is now awaited from the premier court.

With Lerwick being Smyril's least successful port of call from a commercial point of view, the company claims that it loses money every time the Norröna calls into Lerwick as the cost of harbour dues and other charges swallow up the small amount of money made from ticket sales.

Welcoming the new development, SIC convener and Smyril Line director Sandy Cluness said that if the proposed timetable was agreed by other shareholders this week, the development trust would drop its legal action against Smryil Line in Denmark.

But Mr Cluness expressed disappointment that Shetland would lose its weekly ferry link to Bergen. He hoped that another ferry company, perhaps the Norwegian Fjord Line, could be persuaded to provide a service between Lerwick and Bergen.

The proposed table would also mean that the Norröna would call into Lerwick during the so-called shoulder season, for four or five weeks either side of the main summer timetable.

If the proposed timetable is agreed by shareholders it will also provide a reprieve for the five Smyril Line employees at the company's Lerwick office.

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