The real story lies elsewhere. The unacceptably high freight charges that the Steam Packet Co. have been operating have been used to pay the financing costs of their huge mountain of debt believed to been in excess of £200m (which at say 5% p.a. means there is in the region of a £10m cost that must be found each year) This debt came about when the international money markets paid a ridiculously high price for the Steam Packet Company at the height of the boom. Why did the markets do this? - because the Isle of Man Government gave the IOMSPCo the User Agreement.
So the Steam Packet Co is in effect saying - we will charge you through the nose for either passenger/car tickets or we will pass our costs on to you through your shop purchases and you have no choice because we have the User Agreement which your politicians gave us.
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|
Comments
Mezeron could be 'a threat' to passenger services
The Steam Packet's CEO claims a rival freight ship operating out of Douglas could be a threat to their passenger services.
Mark Woodward says they use the money they make from transporting freight to subsidise the fares for the public, adding competition could damage that set-up.
The Ingerborg Pilot, which is owned by Mezeron, has been operating out of Ramsey for a few months now but has had to use Douglas Harbour sometimes because of bad weather and tides.
Some are also seeing it as a move by Mezeron to eventually run a freight service to and from the capital and directly compete with the Steam Packet.
Mr Woodward says they're keeping tabs on the situation.
RSS feed for comments to this post