This year Tallink Grupp celebrates its 30th anniversary, as well as the 13th anniversary of launching regular traffic between Riga and Stockholm. Since 2006, when Tallink began its operations at the Port of Riga, more than 7.5 million passengers, 910,000 vehicles and 175,000 cargo units have travelled this route, Tallink Grupp says in a press release.
Paavo Nõgene, Chairman of the Board of Tallink Grupp tells about its future plans: “We invest in development. During the last decade we have invested 1.5 billion euro in the upgrading of our fleet. Ferry Romantica, which currently serves Riga-Stockholm line, is the first ferry built by us. It was followed by Viktorija, Baltic Queen, Galaxy, Baltic princess, Star, Superstar, and Megastar. We have also started building a new Megastar type ferry. The new ferry will cost approximately 250 million euro and will be completed at the end of 2022.”
Quite soon we will see Tallink LNG ferries powered by natural gas entering the Port of Riga. Paavo Nõgene explains: “All of our new ferries are LNG based. Natural gas is the cleanest source of energy that we can use. It allows us to protect the Baltic Sea, which is our priority. We will not retrofit the current ferries, but all new ferries, which we will ever build, will be powered by natural gas.”
As to new routes, Tallink Grupp is considering several options and several possible directions. “We are interested in more than the Baltic region. There are many seas in the world, and Tallink has to have its presence there,” added the Chairman of the Board.
In 2018, Tallink carried 800,000 passengers via the Port of Riga, which is an absolute record for the company. Furthermore, last year Tallink ferries entered the Port of Riga 365 times, namely, every day. When asked about the future of Riga-Stockholm line, Paavo Nõgene stated: “In the near future, we expect to reach or even exceed the one-million passenger mark on Riga-Stockholm line. Though this year has already presented many challenges like rough weather during January and February, we are convinced that we will achieve this goal.”