Ever since Islands Ferry Network was chosen as Gozo Channel’s preferred partner to provide a fast ferry service between Malta and Gozo, the company has been subjected to a negative campaign in the media aimed to discredit our credentials and to support an appeal by Virtu Ferries which feels it has a divine right to be selected for this service and maintain its monopoly in this field.
In this newspaper, Islands Ferry Network – comprising the Gozo-based Magro Brothers Investments Ltd, of which I am chief executive officer, and Fortina Investments – has been subjected to all sorts of negative comment, including by a journalist who has repeatedly described us as ‘inexperienced’ without ever getting in touch to find out what we have proposed and why we won the market consultation process.
First and foremost, I am a proud Gozitan, who has first-hand experience of what it is like to regularly commute to Malta and the nightmare on a daily basis that this necessary ordeal involves. I know what my fellow Gozitans are going through and have long been determined to do something about the situation, so we do not remain cut off from all the economic opportunities that are open to everyone else.
As many people are aware, Magro Bros is primarily an award-winning food processing company. But perhaps a lesser-known fact is that for over 30 years my family had owned and operated passenger vessels between Malta and Gozo.
Fortina Investments, the other partner in this venture, is involved in a range of businesses, including hotels, but has for many years also provided ferry services between Sliema and Valletta as well as from the capital to the Three Cities. Furthermore, it operates Captain Morgan cruises and a highly successful open top bus service.
The synergies created by this range of services are key to our proposal and what has made us stand out, apart from the fact that neither partner in Islands Ferry Network has ever been afraid to take on a fresh challenge. We have excelled in that without ever becoming complacent or bad-mouthing our legitimate competitors.
The tender document asked for a vessel. We gave them that but also came up with a vision for inter-island transportation
In the first public call for the fast ferry service, Virtu proposed leasing to Gozo Channel an old ferry (without crew) built in 1989. After this process, the government appeared to have had a change of heart and issued a second public call that was broader in scope and stated that the proposed vessel should be a modern type, not more than 12 years old.
We, therefore, put together an ambitious proposal, pledging to provide a brand-new fast ferry for the service that would require an additional investment on our part of €20 million, creating many new jobs in the process. We identified a vessel as well as the expertise that would be required to efficiently run such an operation.
However, since we have experience of the problems involved with inter-island transportation, and are seeking to address them and tackle them as opportunities, we decided to take our proposal a few steps further: we offered to run four return fast ferry trips between Malta and Gozo – using a dedicated vessel – as opposed to the two proposed in the tender, as well as introducing additional fast ferries for services along the north route (Buġibba, St Julian’s, Sliema, Valletta) and the south route (Marsascala, Smart City, Valletta). We did this because we believe commuters need more accessibility and flexibility.
But we did not stop there. In addition to providing this expansive service, Islands Ferry Network is also proposing to create interoperability between our ferry services and land transport services – such as the public bus system as well as introducing dedicated shuttle buses and other vehicles at numerous locations – because we believe it is pointless providing a fast ferry service if people cannot get to their final destination.
Experience teaches us that the Gozitans and Maltese want a holistic service that enables them to travel quickly between one place and another, and we will make it even easier for commuters by enabling them to use their Tal-linja cards for all these services.
Do we have the experience to create and run such an operation?
Well, we are actually doing much of it already thanks to the existing ferry services offered by Fortina Investments. Islands Ferry Network will immediately have at its disposal a vast network of resellers across the islands brought by the channels that Fortina Investments already has in place, meaning passengers will not just be able to get to a port quickly but also seamlessly.
These additional services will also make it possible for a higher number of cruise liner passengers to visit Gozo.
The tender document asked for a vessel. We gave them that but also came up with a vision for inter-island transportation aiming to address the very real obstacles Gozitans and Maltese face on a daily basis, with plans that seek to make a tangible contribution to the transport and accessibility problems experienced by all commuters on a daily basis.
Christian Magro is a director of Islands Ferry Network Ltd.
This is a Times of Malta print opinion piece