"With Trump or without Trump," the president of the Valencian shipping company Baleària, Adolfo Utor, trusts that the expansion that his company plans to continue in the Caribbean will allow it to fulfill an old aspiration that the North American political situation advised postponing at the time: launch of a regular ferry line linking the capital of Cuba, Havana, with Miami, which would undoubtedly constitute a historical milestone and a great business success, given the close ties between both places.
This was stated yesterday by Utor during an interview held in the studios of the regional television station À Punt, where he advanced another very ambitious project that has more chances of becoming a reality in a shorter period of time, the union by regular maritime line of Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic. The Dianense businessman explained that “the hurricanes and Covid” frustrated the first attempt to establish that connection, but he assured that the current progress of the company allows it to face this and other future expansion plans.
Baleària has been present in the Caribbean since 2011, when the route linking Fort Lauderdale (Florida) with Freeport (Grand Bahama) was launched. Currently, the shipping company continues to operate that route and has added another that connects the US port with the island of Bimini, also in the Bahamas, both by fast ferry. The circumstances, once normality has been restored in all operational lines, allow the company to advance the efforts aimed at establishing new routes.
“Covid and the pandemic have made us rethink everything a little, put on the brakes a little, but not too much,” Utor explained yesterday, “because the new constructions have continued: this year the Cap de Barbaria came out, an electric boat, among Ibiza and Formentera; In the year 20, the Eleanor Roosevelt entered service, coinciding with the pandemic, we have the Margarita Salas now being built in Gijón, a sister ship to the Eleanor Roosevelt, which is even going to improve it, and we have investment projects for new constructions in the fleet of the Narrow, and to continue growing too.”
“We are doing very well now in the Bahamas, with the United States,” added the president of the shipping company. “We had a bad time for some time, not only because of the pandemic, but we faced hurricanes, which are frequent there and to which we have somehow become accustomed.”
In addition to resuming the project between the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico, Utor recalled that “before Trump's arrival to the Presidency we had the opportunity to start the line between Miami and Havana, and that is something that could possibly be revived now. , in other circumstances, with Trump or without Trump.”
In any case, “the truth is that our project is now very focused on the Caribbean. There is everything to do there, there are no regular ferry lines, we are doing well and we are very happy with how the connection between Florida and the Bahamas has gone this year, and we have development projects there.”
The other pole of Baleària's international expansion is North Africa, where in addition to the existing lines with Morocco and Algeria, - despite the current difficulties with this country, where the shipping company saw its connections from Valencia reduced from four to one weekly, and has problems recovering funds due to the tense political situation - the company is studying the possibility of establishing connections with other countries, such as Tunisia and even Libya. “They are territories to be developed within a conception of north-south relations and from a European approach,” responding to phenomena such as the location of firms that leave Asia to establish themselves in northern Africa.
