CEO Trond Kleivdal

- Unfortunately, we have no opportunity to maintain a sustainable route offer between Norway and Sweden after the Norwegian government introduced new corona measures, and must therefore take COLOR VIKING out of operation until further notice. The decision entails, in this round, notification of redundancy to just under 100 employees, says CEO Trond Kleivdal.

Color Line's activities are strongly influenced by the government's infection control measures, such as the reintroduction of distance requirements and requests to limit social contact in addition to the requirements for mandatory registration and testing of all arrivals to Norway.

- This is a very heavy message for our employees, who have also been hit hard by the pandemic in the past. We now hope that the government will soon put in place concrete schemes, such as wage compensation, which actually compensate for the effect of the government's measures. It will be able to help give our employees security into the Christmas holidays and until a lasting normalization is in place, says Kleivdal.

On the Sandefjord-Strømstad route, Color Line operates two ships, COLOR VIKING and COLOR HYBRID, which is the world's largest plug-in hybrid ships. The ships usually make two daily round trips each, and the year-round route is thus important for both passenger and freight transport between Norway and Sweden. With COLOR VIKING out of service, the offer will be halved to two daily round trips with COLOR HYBRID.