Speedferries in administration

I had held off blogging about Speedferries recent troubles for a few days, hoping that it was going to resolve itself, but it's looking like SpeedFerries are no longer going to exist any more - at least in their current format.

A couple of weeks ago, as reported on This French Life, SpeedFerries boat was seized in Boulogne by the French port authorities for non-payment of port fees.

At the time the SpeedFerries website reported that this was "totally unexpected, as the authorities had given written confirmation that no legal steps would be taken prior to a meeting planned for November 7th", but it appears that there was more to this than was being immediately reported, as by 12th November a SpeedFerries press release announced that the company was being placed into official administration.

A few days later on there's still no further news other than another press release on 14th November saying that more crossings were cancelled. The main SpeedFerries website announces that all crossings up to (as at today) the 19th November are cancelled with customers being advised to "wait for further information on future crossings and to keep any pre-booked tickets".

See SpeedFerries Press Releases for further news as and when it arrives.

I guess as I own a number of pre-booked SpeedFerries tickets I'll be classified as a creditor of the company; whether I get anything from those tickets as a result remains of course to be seen.

The joint administrators talk about their "key objective is to explore the option of selling the business as a going concern", so hopefully there'll be some Phoenix like resurrection as a result of the administration process - I hope so as SpeedFerries have certainly shaken up the cross-channel market and it would be a shame to see a return to near-monopoly prices from the other carriers.