Greece’s Attica Group bought the ‘Valentine’ from the CLdN fleet after the ‘Clementine’. That ship had only been bought by a New Zealand ferry company at the beginning of this year, but they are already letting it return to Europe.
As part of its renewal programme, CLdN buys new ships on the one hand and removes older vessels from the fleet on the other. This included the ‘Valentine’, which was leased to New Zealand rail operator KiwiRail from 2021. That runs a ferry service between the northern and southern parts of New Zealand. The leasing was not done by CLdN but by Swedish company Gotland Shipping, which had bought the ‘Valentine’ at the start of the charter contract in November 2021.
After the contract expired at the end of 2022, KiwiRail purchased the ‘Valentine’, but less than nine months later the vessel changed hands again. Speaking to the NZ Herald newspaper, Duncan Roy, managing director of Interislander, confirmed the sale. “It was a good time to realise a financial capital gain and to deploy the crew to strengthen the manning on our other vessels.”
First past Shanghai
According to sources in New Zealand and Greece, the ‘Valentine’ has been bought by Greece’s Attica Group. The intention would be to deploy the ship in the Blue Star Ferries division, which operates rooro and ropax services between the Greek islands. The ‘Valentine’ left Wellington for Shanghai yesterday. On the voyage to Europe, new cars will first be loaded in Asia.
This will be the third ro-ro ship in the fleet for Blue Star Ferries. In 2019, the ‘Anglia Seaways’ was acquired from DFDS and renamed ‘Blue Carrier 1’. This summer, Attica Group bought from CLdN the ‘Clementine’, a sister ship to the ‘Valentine’. This roro was not renamed but was immediately leased back to CLdN until the end of 2023. In recent months, the ship has been operating between Turkey, Greece, Slovenia and southern France.
Six sister ships
The ‘Valentine’ and the ‘Clementine’ belong to CLdN’s so-called Kawasaki class. That series of six sister ships was built at the Japanese shipyard Kawasaki in the second half of the 1990s. This series further includes the ‘Victorine’, ‘Celandine’, ‘Melusine’ and ‘Celestine’ and ‘Clementine’.
They have a length of 162 metres and a capacity of 2,300 liner metres, good for 160 trailers. The ‘Clementine’ has additional space for 458 cars, according to Attica Group.
