With so much made of air travel these days it's sometimes easy to forget that Stena Line has been sailing successfully for 40 years. Area director Michael McGrath is confident about its future.

Despite the current recession the demand for increased frequency of service and available ferry capacity into the heart of Belfast remains constant. The new vessel will give us both and will provide vital additional capacity for the freight market.

We carry around one million passengers and have done so for the past couple of years. Given the challenging climate just now we are pleased with this performance and are looking forward to an upturn over the next 12 to 24 months.

Our market includes both ferry and airline passengers. In isolation on the ferry side we estimate a market share of just over 50%. On the freight side about a third of all freight movements on the Irish Sea travel with Stena Line. As far as growth is concerned, as mentioned earlier we continue to invest in our routes and are confident that we will be well placed to leverage any upturn in the market when it occurs.

As I mentioned earlier we have the same amount of passengers in 2009 as we had in 2007, prior to the recession. There is a combination of factors working here. Firstly, ferry services offer a unique possibility to holiday 'locally' and to do that with the comfort of your own transportation. Secondly, the initial impact of the glut of airline services from 2005 on ferry travel has disappeared. Indeed many services have closed and this combined with the significant change in cost structures in the airline industry has undoubtedly benefited our industry.

Fuel was once 10% of our cost base and is currently closer to 30%, that's a large increase to absorb for any business. Volatility leads to uncertainty and it has caused us to do a lot of work on trying to reduce our exposure to rising fuel costs. Our business to business partners have helped to share the burden with us.

Ultimately higher fuel prices lead to price increases either direct to our passengers or indirectly to end consumers. However, to date the impact has not resulted in Stena Line reducing its capacity or frequency of service. We are determined to maintain the level of service we have to and from Northern Ireland and with the addition of the Stena Navigator to the route now offer 14 crossings per day.

With regard to Northern Ireland we are firm believers in steady economic growth.

We have never expected the same type of extreme growth we experienced in the Republic which also means less of an impact when things get tough. Northern Ireland grows at approximately 3% per annum for freight traffic year on year and has done so for the past eight years.

Long-term goals in this area of the Irish Sea focus on maintaining our leading position in the travel market and continuing to grow our freight business.

We are currently exploring the possibility of establishing a new terminal and docking facility on the Scottish side of the route to rival our VT4 facility in Belfast. We are working our way through a planning procedure programme.

The actions in other European areas within Stena Line reflect market conditions in those areas. What happens going forward is of course dependent on how the market develops but at this time our focus is on increasing our level of service and we confident that the market will hold, therefore we have no major reduction plans for 2010 at this time.

We are at the end of the tender process and will appoint a preferred bidder shortly. The current planning project, once approved, will deliver the new port in 2011.

On the Irish Sea we have two large passenger destinations, Dublin and Belfast. Dublin has historically attracted more tourists but Belfast is the current growth market for us and from just looking around the city you can see why, it has transformed itself over the last 10 years.

Though the recession will put a temporary damper on growth we are confident that Belfast has a fantastic life as a major European tourist destination in the future.

Exporters from Northern Ireland have always been busy working in Britain and Europe. Using our services on the Irish Sea and the North Sea has provided an integrated 'one stop shop' for local companies with connections throughout Europe to simplify the transport chain which they tell us they find 'invaluable'.