A businessman who set up a shipping line as a planned rival to the Steam Packet has poured scorn over the government’s takeover plan

Kurt Buchholz founded the Ellan Vannin Line in 2013 in an attempt to launch a roll-on, roll-off daily cargo service between Douglas and Heysham.

But without government support, and no ship, it never got off the ground.

He stood as a House of Keys candidate in Douglas Central in the 2016 general election.

Reacting to the announcement of the planned £124m deal to buy the Steam Packet, he said: ’The Steam Packet ships are close to scrap value with their age, about £15m.

’Ignoring the small value of their ships, the linkspan, port equipment and the office equipment, the only real and valuable asset the Steam Packet holds is the traffic to and from the Isle of Man.

’It’s like a country that has gold in the ground and this gold is mined by a mining company. When the government of this country wants to purchase the mining company, it would not pay for their own gold in the ground, would they?’

motives

He claimed the deal was £100m too high and questioned the motives behind what he described as a ’waste of taxpayers’ money’.

Mr Buchholz added: ’Setting up a new company would costs less than 60m, including a suitable new passenger ship, two smaller Ro-Ros and the shore operations set-up and you would not have to fire the management of the SPC after takeover which should be an absolute must.’