A new company that has been
set up in the UK plans to introduce two vessels of about
100,000 gross tons to reopen a regular passenger liner
service between the UK and Australia.
Project
Orient Limited, which is the new company, includes former
Fred. Olsen Cruise Lines’ director of marketing
Nigel Lingard as a non-executive member of its board.
“If we look at the volumes of travel between North Western Europe and Australasia, we would need to grab less than 1% of the total to make this economically viable,” Lingard told Cruise Business Online.
The aim is to maintain a monthly service around the year to both directions, but itineraries could vary, from the shortest way via Capetown to Fremantle and then on to Sydney, to sailings via the Suez Canal with calls perhaps including Dubai, India and Singapore. Some sailings might also head via Panama, Lingard said, adding that routing would depend on e.g. customer demand.
The Project Orient team has not the finance in place at the moment to place orders for the planned ships and Lingard says finding the principal equity investors is a key task that the board is facing at the moment. Middle Eastern wealth funds are seen as potential investors in the company, he added.
At the moment, several ships sail on world cruises from Britain to Australia each year and sections of these cruises can be bought as liner voyages in both directions. However, virtually all sailings depart from the UK in January and because they are sold cruises rather than liner voyages, they include calls at several ports en route, which means that they often take twice the 25 days that Project Orient plans its ships to need for the voyage.
Lingard says that initial talks with travel agents have suggested that there is an interest in this kind of product. The ships would need to make about 25 knots to meet the required voyage time of 25 days. This again that they would have to be highly fuel efficient in design, Lingard pointed out.
Project Orient team hopes to start the service in four years’ time.
There was a regular liner service from the UK to Australia from 1852, when P&O started the run with a small steamship called Chusan, until 1977, when the Greek-owned Chandris Lines retired the 1940 built Australis from the service. The ship had been built as America in 1940.
P&O operated the service up to 1973 and its last newbuildings for the route, the 45,733 gross ton Canberra (1961) and 41,923 gross ton Oriana (1960, not to be confused with the present ship of the same name), made the voyage in about three weeks at an average speed of 27.5 knots.
Project
Orient Limited, which is the new company, includes former
Fred. Olsen Cruise Lines’ director of marketing
Nigel Lingard as a non-executive member of its board.“If we look at the volumes of travel between North Western Europe and Australasia, we would need to grab less than 1% of the total to make this economically viable,” Lingard told Cruise Business Online.
The aim is to maintain a monthly service around the year to both directions, but itineraries could vary, from the shortest way via Capetown to Fremantle and then on to Sydney, to sailings via the Suez Canal with calls perhaps including Dubai, India and Singapore. Some sailings might also head via Panama, Lingard said, adding that routing would depend on e.g. customer demand.
The Project Orient team has not the finance in place at the moment to place orders for the planned ships and Lingard says finding the principal equity investors is a key task that the board is facing at the moment. Middle Eastern wealth funds are seen as potential investors in the company, he added.
At the moment, several ships sail on world cruises from Britain to Australia each year and sections of these cruises can be bought as liner voyages in both directions. However, virtually all sailings depart from the UK in January and because they are sold cruises rather than liner voyages, they include calls at several ports en route, which means that they often take twice the 25 days that Project Orient plans its ships to need for the voyage.
Lingard says that initial talks with travel agents have suggested that there is an interest in this kind of product. The ships would need to make about 25 knots to meet the required voyage time of 25 days. This again that they would have to be highly fuel efficient in design, Lingard pointed out.
Project Orient team hopes to start the service in four years’ time.
There was a regular liner service from the UK to Australia from 1852, when P&O started the run with a small steamship called Chusan, until 1977, when the Greek-owned Chandris Lines retired the 1940 built Australis from the service. The ship had been built as America in 1940.
P&O operated the service up to 1973 and its last newbuildings for the route, the 45,733 gross ton Canberra (1961) and 41,923 gross ton Oriana (1960, not to be confused with the present ship of the same name), made the voyage in about three weeks at an average speed of 27.5 knots.
