The Grimaldi Group is a private shipping

Shipping

Shipping has multiple meanings. It can be a physical process of transporting commodities and merchandise goods and cargo, by land, air, and sea. It also can describe the movement of objects by ship.Land or "ground" shipping can be by train or by truck...

 company owned by Guido Grimaldi and based in Livorno

Livorno

Livorno , traditionally Leghorn , is a port city on the Tyrrhenian Sea on the western edge of Tuscany, Italy. It is the capital of the Province of Livorno, having a population of approximately 160,000 residents in 2009.- History :...

, Italy. Grimaldi operates a large fleet of ro-ro vessels.

Shipping

The Grimalidi Group is a conglomerate of companies linked to the logistics business with a main-focus on shipping. The main brands of the company are:

• Grimaldi Lines - cargo and ferry company
• Atlantic Container Line
  Atlantic Container Line
  Atlantic Container Line is an American shipping company owned by the Italian Grimaldi Group.The company operates large RORO Container ships between Europe and North America.-History:...
  
   - container-based cargo services in the North Atlantic
• Minoan Lines
  Minoan Lines
  Minoan Lines is one of the dominant passenger ferry companies in Greece, sailing between Piraeus and Crete and in the Adriatic Sea, between Patras and various Italian ports. The company was founded in May 1972...
  
   - a ferry company sailing between Italy and Greece and within Greece
• Finnlines
  Finnlines
  Finnlines Plc is a Finnish shipping company that operates freight throughout Northern Europe as well as passenger services in the Baltic Sea. In the past, Finnlines has operated ships under the brands Finncarriers, Finnflow Systems, Finnjet Lines, and FG Shipping Oy Ab...
  
   - a ferry company oparting in the Baltic Sea
  Baltic Sea
  The Baltic Sea is a brackish mediterranean sea located in Northern Europe, from 53°N to 66°N latitude and from 20°E to 26°E longitude. It is bounded by the Scandinavian Peninsula, the mainland of Europe, and the Danish islands. It drains into the Kattegat by way of the Øresund, the Great Belt and...
  
  
• Malta Motorways of the Sea - a ferry company operating in the Mediterranean between Italy, Spain, Tunisia
  Tunisia
  Tunisia , officially the Tunisian RepublicThe long name of Tunisia in other languages used in the country is: , is the northernmost country in Africa. It is a Maghreb country and is bordered by Algeria to the west, Libya to the southeast, and the Mediterranean Sea to the north and east. Its area...
  
  , Libya
  Libya
  Libya is an African country in the Maghreb region of North Africa bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to the north, Egypt to the east, Sudan to the southeast, Chad and Niger to the south, and Algeria and Tunisia to the west....
  
   and Malta
  Malta
  Malta , officially known as the Republic of Malta , is a Southern European country consisting of an archipelago situated in the centre of the Mediterranean, south of Sicily, east of Tunisia and north of Libya, with Gibraltar to the west and Alexandria to the east.Malta covers just over in...
  
  

Grimaldi Lines

This is the main shipping company within the group. The Grimaldi family has links to shipping for many generations. According to their own records the oldest written records linking the Grimaldi family to shipping dates back to 1348 when three Grimaldi brothers received a precious relic as a guarantee for the chartering of three ships

The current Grimaldi companies can be traced back to the middle of the 19th century when Italian shipowner Gioacchino Lauro started a steamboat company. His son Achille expanded that shipping company and it became in the middle of the 20th century one of the largest shupping companies in the world. At that time Giovanni Grimaldi was a lawyer who was married to the sister of above Achille Lauro. Amelia Grimaldi-Lauro asked her brother Achillo to take her son Guido under his wings and this brought the Grimaldi family back in the shipping business. It was this son Guido who founded the group in 1947 with his brothers Luigi, Mario, Aldo and Ugo by buying a Liberty ship

Liberty ship

Liberty ships were cargo ships built in the United States during World War II. Though British in conception, they were adapted by the U.S. as they were cheap and quick to build, and came to symbolize U.S. wartime industrial output. Based on vessels ordered by Britain to replace ships torpedoed by...

.

Ferry operations

Grimaldi Lines operate ferry-lines with routes in the Mediterranean. They have routes to Spain, Morocco, Tunisia, Malta and Italy. Under the Grimaldi Lines brand they operate six ro-ro ferries. The ships in the Grimaldi Lines fleet vary in size and design, with the larger ferries being able to carry up to 2200 passengers and a cruise-speed of 22.5 knots

Cargo

For cargo the company uses their passenger cruise ferry class ships, dedicated truck ferries and also container/ro-ro ships. Grimaldi has a fleet of special car carriers. Grimaldi has 32 dedicated car + container ships and another 5 Atlantic class ships.

One of these car-carriers, the Republica de Argentina ran aground in the Western Scheldt

Western Scheldt

The Western Scheldt in the province Zeeland in the southwestern Netherlands, is the estuary of the Scheldt river. This river once had several estuaries, but the others are disconnected from the Scheldt, leaving the Westerschelde as its only direct way to the sea. It is an important shipping route...

 between the North Sea

North Sea

In the southwest, beyond the Straits of Dover, the North Sea becomes the English Channel connecting to the Atlantic Ocean. In the east, it connects to the Baltic Sea via the Skagerrak and Kattegat, narrow straits that separate Denmark from Norway and Sweden respectively...

 and the port of Antwerp on 7 October 2011 but was pulled back afloat at the next high tide

High Tide

High Tide was a band formed in 1969 by Tony Hill , Simon House , Peter Pavli and Roger Hadden .-History:...

External links

• Grimaldi Group Website
• Grimaldi Togo