Will Eurostar survive? That’s been the on-off saga for the past few months.
Today we can finally confirm that Eurostar’s future is now safe.
Eurostar has received a £250 million refinancing package guaranteed by its shareholders: France’s SNCF, Patina Rail LLP (a number of Canadian investors), fund manager Hermes and Belgium’s SNCB.
In a statement, Eurostar’s CEO Jacques Damas said, “Everyone at Eurostar is encouraged by this strong show of support from our shareholders and banks.
“The refinancing agreement is the key factor enabling us to increase our services as the situation with the pandemic starts to improve.”
At the time of writing Eurostar operates a minimum schedule of one daily service from London to Paris plus one to Amsterdam (via Brussels).
The majority of its fleet stands idle. And there are no plans to serve any UK point other than London before 2022 and neither will its service to Marseille restart before 2022 at the earliest.
However, it is likely that services to Amsterdam and Brussels will be increased over the not too distant future.
Eurostar now confirms that Paris will move to a twice daily frequency from May 27 (something we reported a couple of weeks ago) with up to three a day by the end of June.
