Finnlines mainly operates in the Baltic Sea and North Sea. Unitised traffic has experienced strong growth in the Baltic Sea in recent years, due among other things to the continuous increase of traffic to and from Russia. Reliability of the transport chain, information management and route frequency have become increasingly important as more and more companies stop maintaining stocks. Recently, oil prices have made up a major expense factor in the transport sector as a whole. In the second half of the year under review, the growth of cargo transports became clearly negative on all routes, due to the global economic downturn.

The Finnlines Fleet

Finnlines owns the largest and newest ro-pax fleet in the Baltic Sea. The latest Star-class series of vessels was brought fully into traffic in 2007. In the year under review, Finnlines’ Star-class vessels operated on the Helsinki–Travemünde and Malmö–Travemünde routes. In April 2008, the company acquired the ro-ro vessels MS Finnpulp, Finnmill, Finnkraft and Finnhawk.

Six 10,500-dwt ro-ro vessels ordered in 2007 from the Chinese Jinling shipyard are to be completed in 2010–2011.

In 2008, the Group operated an average of 40 vessels, of which 35 were in its own traffic. Of the vessels, 15 were ro-pax, 24 were ro-ro and one was other kind of a vessel. At year-end, the total capacity of the ro-ro liner fleet was approximately 86,000 lane meters. At that time, the Group owned 19 vessels, which was equivalent to approximately 66 per cent of its ro-ro capacity. The average age of the Group’s tonnage was approximately 10 years. The owned fleet is primarily managed by the Group.

Route Network

During the year under review, Finnlines had roughly 70 weekly departures from Finland, covering all of Finland’s major ports. A major development in terms of traffic was the opening of the new Port of Vuosaari in Helsinki, in November 2008.

The main ports of call are still Helsinki, Turku and Naantali. Finnlines’ Turku–Travemünde traffic was centralised to the port of Pansio from 19 December 2008. Other liner traffic ports for the Group are Kotka, Hanko and Rauma. The main ports in Sweden are Kapellskär and Malmö, in Denmark Aarhus, in Poland Gdynia, and in Germany Lübeck/Travemünde (still the main port of call for Finnish and Swedish routes) and Rostock.

The main ports in the North Sea are Hull in the UK, Antwerp in Belgium, and Amsterdam in the Netherlands. In the Bay of Biscay, the main port was Bilbao in Spain, although some stops were made in El Ferrol. Finnlines also has a direct link between St. Petersburg and Lübeck