A veteran P&O ropax is set to make its final voyage to the recycling beach at Aliaga after spending three decades shuttling between Dover and Calais.
The sale of the 28,100-gt ferry Pride of Burgundy (built 1993) marks a return to buying action by Turkish ship recyclers who have been quiet since a devastating earthquake hit Turkey a month ago.
Brokers report that the Schichau Seebeckwerft-built Pride of Burgundy has been sold to an European Union-approved recycling facility for $320 per ldt, which nets the UK-based subsidiary of Dubai’s DP World $3.7m.
The Pride of Burgundy was designed as a ro-ro vessel but was completed with accommodation for 1,420 passengers. Its largely uneventful career shuttling passengers and their cars across the English Channel came to an end in May 2020, when the ship was placed in lay up after demand on its route dropped due to Covid-19.
The ship briefly returned to active service later that year, but in a freight-only capacity. More recently it has been laid up in the River Fal.
P&O Ferries has just introduced into service the Guangzhou Shipyard International-built P&O Pioneer, the first of two 47,394-gt battery hybrid ropaxes on the Dover to Calais run that it claims are “the most sustainable ships ever to sail on the English Channel”.
The second vessel, the P&O Liberte, is expected to enter service in the fourth quarter, at which time ferry industry observers believe P&O Ferries will sell another of its ropaxes of a similar age to the Pride of Burgundy.
