Alicante Loses €180m In A Year Without The Algeria Ferry Crossing

ALICANTE Loses €180m In A Year Without The Algeria Ferry Crossing From Oran

Algerie Ferries is the company that operates the Alicante-Oran ferry crossing, which before the pandemic, was making 120 crossings annually from Algeria to the Spanish port city, which each trip bringing an income of around €1.5 million to businesses in Alicante and surrounding cities such as Elche.
This means that the region’s shops and warehouses have incurred losses of around €180 million thanks to the pandemic stopping these crossings, an enormous loss for a region that is suffering one of the biggest drops in GDP in Spain, along with one of the highest increases in unemployment.
The Djazair II passenger ferry would make the 10-hour trip from Algeria, and arrive from Oran at 8am, with 1,200 passengers and 300 mostly empty transport vehicles, which would then proceed to the various outlets and industrial estates on the immediate Spanish mainland.
These products would then be shipped back across to Algeria and sold in local shops and markets, boarding the ferry for the return trip when it departed at 8pm in the evening.

Felipe Garrigós, a customs officer, and the owner of the company of the same name, explained, “They come to buy a lot of clothes, footwear, they know perfectly where to find the best deals. Also food products, a lot of perfumery and cosmetics, as well as household appliances and mobile phones.”

These merchants could buy products in Spain that were not available in Algeria, explained Mr Garrigós, “because they are not subject to the high tariffs that Algeria charges on imports from countries like China”, also pointing out that some of the vehicles came loaded with certain products that the Spanish market wanted, such as dates, fish, prawns, “but in much smaller quantities,” explains Garrigós, as reported by lavanguardia.es.

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