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Grimaldi buys into TTT Lines

The year 2016 will be archived as another year of new investments for Grimaldi Group. The Naples-based company has just announced two important developments in Italy.

“We have just bought into the short sea shipping company TTT Lines with a 50% share and we are interested to purchase a stake also in Venice Ro-Port Mos, the company operating the roro terminal of the port of Venice,” said Emanuele Grimaldi at the 20th Euromed Convention.

TTT Lines, a company with two ropax vessels chartered-in and deployed on the Naples-Catania and Salerno-Messina routes, was entirely controlled by Caronte&Tourist Group which recently took the 50% previously owned by Tomasos group. Now half of the shares have been sold to Grimaldi which already chartered out one of its ships (the ropax Florencia) to TTT Lines earlier this year. Two new routes have also been launched between Genoa and Salerno and between Bari and Venice.

The Naples-based shipping group landed in Venice in 2015 and one year later is interested at taking a share (possibly a majority stake) of the local roro terminal from Mantovani Group. “The port of Venice is very well infrastructured for roro maritime services and has huge expansion potential,” Gudio Grimaldi said.

As for the investments in new tonnage, a project called G5GG (which stands for Grimaldi’s 5th Generation of Green Ships) has been revealed at the Euromed convention but it deals with the 10 new pure car truck carrier already ordered at Jinling and Yangfan shipyard.

Replying to a question from Splash on the risks following the financial troubles of Yangfan Group of China, Gianluca Grimaldi, ceo in charge of deepsea routes said: “There are no risks for us since we have extended the time charters we already have on some car carriers deployed on the Europe – North America routes to serve Fiat Chrysler Automobiles traffic. As for the ne buildings at Yangfan they will be delivered with a few months of delay, nothing worrying.”

Nicola Capuzzo

Nicola is a highly qualified journalist focused on transport economics, logistics and shipping with broad experience in both online and printed media. Specialties: shipping, ship finance, banking, commodities and port economics. He regularly interviews Europe's top shipowner executives for Maritime CEO magazine.
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