This Thursday, Baleària signed an agreement with the Moroccan Tourist Office to promote the arrival of tourists by boat. It is an example of the determined commitment that the Valencian shipping company makes to create new international routes and, above all, to export a maritime connection model that works for it in Spanish territory. The president of the company, Adolfo Utor, has presented several actions related to this strategy at Fitur, but with different scenarios: the Caribbean and North Africa.
In Morocco, the shipping company will promote its routes between Spain and the North African country with the aim of facilitating cultural and economic exchange between both countries. "Given the growth in maritime traffic and in goods and passengers, we are going to be there modernizing the fleet, incorporating more competitive and more sustainable ships," Utor explains to La Vanguardia. Today, the shipping company already has ten daily connections from the Peninsula with the ports of Tangier Med and Nador.
Now, as Utor explains, his plans would go beyond Morocco: "We have a plan for Algeria, which we would extend to Tunisia and Libya and the rest of Africa, where we believe that more maritime lines are needed," says the businessman, who considers that "the problems of terrorism and immigration that exist in the Mediterranean would have part of the solution if more maritime lines were established between Spain, France, Italy and Greece with North Africa."
The shipping company's proposal is also to extend the model to the Caribbean. Today Baleària also presented the new route that will link the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico at the end of the year in an event attended by various Puerto Rican authorities. "It is not easy, because to open new lines you have to measure the start-up costs, but we believe that there are immense possibilities and we think that our future as a company is to reproduce our model in an area of the world where our model does not exist" , he declares. "This is what Baleària has done and it is what we want to do for the next 25 years in the Caribbean," he adds.
It is planned that, starting in November, Baleària will connect the Dominican port of San Pedro de Macorís with the Puerto Rican port of Mayagüez daily with a ferry, on a 133-mile crossing. The company plans to invest 100 million dollars in the launch of this new maritime line, to which it will transfer its strategic axes of innovation and sustainability, offering combined transport of passengers, vehicles and goods, with daily and reliable communications.
Within this public-private project, Baleària will build a multifunctional passenger terminal in the port of San Pedro de Macorís (Dominican Republic) and will adapt the existing facilities in Mayagüez (Puerto Rico) to standardize it to European quality standards. Both terminals will have a walkway and finger, as well as a heel to facilitate the loading and unloading of vehicles. The shipping company has operated in the Caribbean since 2011, where it currently connects the North American port of Fort Lauderdale with the Bahamian islands of Grand Bahama and Bimini. Thus, with this new service, it will add its third line in the Caribbean and its sixth international route.
