Alcohol, Baltic, Estonia, Latvia, Markets and Companies, Port, Retail, Transport

"Actually it's being done in collaboration with the Alko1000 store, we cannot comment on this fully now. We hope that it will get going," told Raihan Group board member Hannes Lehtoja  when asked about an ad on the Raihan website saying that the first buses will depart from the D terminal of the Tallinn passenger port on Nov. 19.

Tickets to the 240-kilometer trip to Valka and the 195-kilometer trip to Ikla can be bought on the company's website and the fare is 45 or 55 euros. Both buses will depart from Tallinn at 10:15 a.m. on Saturdays.

The Tallinn-Ikla-Tallinn bus is scheduled to be back at D terminal at 6 p.m. and the Tallinn-Valka-Tallinn bus at 7 p.m. at the latest. The buses will make no stops while en route to the destination. At the store passengers will have one hour for shopping and on the return trip one hour is reserved for lunch.

The manager of the Alko1000 chain has said that 99 percent of their customers in Latvia are Estonians going to Latvia to stock up on drinks that are cheaper in Latvia as a result of lower alcohol excise duty there.

"We made the Valka store bigger, created some 300 square meters of extra space. We also introduced foodstuffs - oils, different sauces and chips so people could buy something to eat while on the road," told the manager of the Valka store of Alko1000, Meelis Reiljan. He confirmed the plan to introduce a regular bus service between the Tallinn passenger port and the Alko1000 outlet in Valka.