Hans J Marter

10 November, 2007

A PREFERRED bidder for a new passenger and cargo ferry link between Norway, Shetland and the UK mainland should be announced within the next seven to ten days.

Officers working on the NORSHUKON link project are currently evaluating tender documents received from a number of bidders.

NORSHUKON is a Norwegian/Shetland consortium that hopes to create a new ferry service that would link in to existing ferry services to the continent.

Moregruppen, the Norwegian element in the consortium, is keen to divert huge volumes of cargo from road to ferry transport to save time and money.

The proposed ferry service would run between Kristiansund, Lerwick and one of three UK ports in the running: Rosyth, Newcastle and the Humber port complex.

Yesterday (Friday) project officer with Shetland transport partnership ZetTrans, Ken Duerden, said the preferred bidder should be known by the middle of the month. He added that he was unable to reveal how many bids had been received.

The European Union supports such projects with generous subsidy payments under the EU-TEN-1 programme.

However time is pressing as application documents for EU funding have to be submitted by January 2008.

The proposed ferry service would re-establish a direct link between Shetland and Norway, which was lost at the end of September when Smyril Line withdrew its ferry from the Lerwick to Bergen service.