SeaFrance Dover-Calais Ferries celebrated its 10th anniversary

SeaFrance Dover-Calais Ferries celebrated its 10th anniversary last week by breaking its own record.

The company set sail for the first time with a ferry carrying one car, three foot passengers and two pieces of freight, on New Year's Day, 1996.

Ten years later, the French company is a main player on the short sea route.

Sales director Bill Laidlaw was there on the day SeaFrance began. "I was standing at the Dockside on January 1st, 1996 and saw our first customers arrive on the foot passenger bus with a glass of champagne in their hands.

I must admit, it was a great moment for me. I actually began work on July 16th, 1995, with the task of recruiting and training the port operations and sales teams for SeaFrance Limited. During the first year of operations, we had 70 members of staff in the UK.

Amazingly, 24 of those employees are still with company, a third of our original workforce. In addition to this, a significant number of our current UK staff, now numbering almost 200, have been with the company for seven, eight and nine years.

I am sure this is one of the reasons why SeaFrance has performed so strongly over the years - our staff are extremely dedicated." Port operations manager Kevin Root was also on the dockside 10 years ago. "So much has changed in SeaFrance and at the port since then. We now have a six-strong fleet of ferries, including two new state- of-the-art superferries, and our operation has been fine tuned over those ten years."

Managing Director Robin Wilkins said there had been huge changes in the ferry industry during the last ten years. "The standards are vastly superior to ten years ago," he said. "Today the whole ferry experience is more like a cruise."

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