Estonia, EU – Baltic States, Good for Business, Port, Transport

The company transported a record number of passengers in August on the Estonia-Sweden route and on the Latvia-Sweden route. The Estonia-Finland route additionally transported the second highest number of passengers in the company's history for the month of August, the shipper said.

"Transporting one mln passengers in August is a great result for this month since it is usually the end of the high season with many children in our key markets back to school and people back to work, traditionally marking the end of the summer high season of travelling in our region. So, we are particularly pleased to achieve the first ever mln-passenger-August in the company's history," Tallink Grupp CEO Paavo Nogene said in a press release.

The number of passengers carried increased on all routes in August. On the Estonia-Finland route, the number of passengers rose 3.9% on year to 514,936, while the increase on the Latvia-Sweden route was also 3.9%, to 97,816 passengers.

Annual growth on the Finland-Sweden route was 0.5%, amounting to 294,825 passengers. On the Estonia-Sweden route, passenger figures moved up 0.2% on year to 109,988.

"The decrease in cargo transport, however, has continued in the month, despite the Finland-Sweden routes continuing to see an increase. Competition in this area has obviously tightened in the last few months, so we must work harder in the cargo transport area in the months to come to improve business in this area and achieve the targets set. However, I believe we continue to have an excellent and competitive cargo transportation service to offer to all our cargo customers, but a particularly good offering on the Estonia-Finland routes with up to 16 departures daily, offering great flexibility for the service users," Nogene said.

The number of cargo units transported by the company decreased in August by 3.2% compared to the same period in 2018 to 30,519 units, but the number of cargo units continued to increase positively on the Finland-Sweden route with 7.6% more cargo units transported on the route compared to August 2018.

On the Estonia-Finland route, cargo transport was down 5.9% on year to 19,204 units, while the number of cargo units transported declined 5.7% to 3,443 units on the Estonia-Sweden route and 3.6% to 1,280 units on the Latvia-Sweden route.

The number of passenger vehicles saw a minor increase in August 2019 by 17 units to 115,339 passenger vehicles transported in the month, with the Estonia-Finland route contributing to the increase with 1.9 % more passenger vehicles transported in the month compared to the same period last year.

The greatest decline was seen on the Latvia-Sweden route, where the number of passenger vehicles transported fell 11.2% on year to 6,839 vehicles. On the Finland-Sweden route, the figures declined 2.3% on year to 21,033 vehicles, while the number of passenger vehicles transported on the Estonia-Sweden route was down 1.1% on year to 7,857 vehicles.