Finnlines

Finnlines Plc

Industry	Shipping
Founded	1947
Headquarters	Helsinki, Finland
Area served	Northern Europe
Key people	Emanuele Grimaldi, President and CEO
Services	Freight transport Short sea shipping
Revenue	511.2 million Euro (2015)
Operating income	126.9 million Euro (2015)
Number of employees	1,588 (31.12.2015)
Website	www.finnlines.com

Finnlines Plc (Finnish: Finnlines Oyj) is a leading shipping operator of ro-ro and passenger services in the Baltic Sea and the North Sea. The Company is a part of the Grimaldi Group, one of the world’s largest operators of ro-ro vessels and the largest operator of the Motorways of the Sea in Europe for both passengers and freight. This affiliation enables Finnlines to offer liner services to and from any destination in the Mediterranean, West Africa as well as the Atlantic coast of both North and South America. Finnlines’ sea transports are concentrated in the Baltic and the North Sea. Finnlines’ passenger-freight vessels offer services from Finland to Germany and via the Åland Islands to Sweden as well as from Sweden to Germany. The Company has subsidiaries or sales offices in Germany, Belgium, Great Britain, Sweden, Denmark and Poland. In addition to sea transportation, the Company provides port services in Finland in Helsinki and Turku, which are the most important seaports in Finland.

Finnlines’ ro-ro services in the Baltic and North Sea areas provide a backbone to Finnish industries’ transportation needs. The services covers the Finnish ports of Rauma, Uusikaupunki, Turku, Helsinki and Kotka, offering connections with Russian, Estonian, Polish, German, Danish, British, Dutch, Belgian and Spanish ports.

HansaLink consists of three Star-class ro-pax vessels plying between Helsinki and Travemünde. For passengers it is the only direct connection by sea between Finland and Continental Europe.

NordöLink runs a ro-pax service between Malmö, Sweden and Travemünde, Germany. FinnLink operates between Naantali, Finland and Kapellskär, Sweden. TransRussiaExpress (TRE) runs a regular direct liner service between Germany and Russia (Lübeck–St. Petersburg).

Finnlines was founded in 1947 as a subsidiary of Merivienti Oy, founded earlier the same year by Enso-Gutzeit and Kansaneläkelaitos, to operate Merivienti's liner service from Finland to the United States.

Merivienti Oy (English: Sea Export Ltd.) was founded on 18 April 1947 by the Finnish forest industry giant Enso-Gutzeit and Kansaneläkelaitos (Finnish Social Insurance)—both completely or partially state-owned companies—to ensure transportation of forest industry products from Finland to Western block countries. According to the 1947 Paries Peace Treaty with the Soviet Union, Finland had to pay US$300 million worth of war reparations to the Soviet Union, mostly in industrial goods. With only 30% of the Finnish merchant fleet having survived the war, and 2/3 of the surviving ships being used by the Allied forces or under forced charter to the Soviet Union, new tonnage was desperately needed.