Moby Lines

Moby S.p.A.

Industry	Passenger transportation, Freight transportation
Founded	1959
Headquarters	Milan, Italy
Area served	Italy, France, Corsica, Sardinia
Key people	Vincenzo Onorato, Chairman
Website	www.moby.it

MS Moby Aki in Livorno, 2007.

Moby Lines (Moby Lines S.p.A.) is an Italian shipping company that operates ferries and cruiseferries between the Italian or French mainland and the islands of Elba, Sardinia and Corsica. The company was founded in 1959 under the name Navigazione Arcipelago Maddalenino (NAVARMA for short).

In 2006 Moby Lines purchased Lloyd Sardegna. The company is known for using Warner Bros. Looney Tunes characters as the external livery of its ships.

History

"Moby Wonder" in Livorno, 22 of February, 2011.

NAVARMA was founded in 1959 by Achille Onorato, and started traffic from Sardinia to the islands on coast of Sardinia with the small ferry M/S Maria Maddalena purchased from Denmark. In February 1966 NAVARMA purchased a second ferry, M/S Bonaficio, and started service between Sardinia and Corsica. The company slowly expanded, purchasing another ferry in 1967 and taking delivery of two newbuilds in 1974 and 1981. With the larger fleet, new routes to the Italian mainland were also introduced.

In 1982 the company acquired M/S Free Enterprise II from Townsend Thoresen, renamed her M/S Moby Blu and painted her in the "blue whale" livery that later came to characterise Moby Lines (the company name still remained NAVARMA at this point). The Moby Blu was over twice the size of NAVARMA's previously largest ship. By 1988 four additional larger ferries (all with Moby-prefixed names) had joined by NAVARMA fleet and additional routes to the Italian mainland were opened.

During the early 1990s NAVARMA acquired further used ferries, which replaced the Moby ferries acquired ni the 1980s. During the same time "Moby Lines" was adopted as the official company name. From 1996 onwards the company fleet has grown radically with addition of new, larger and faster tonnage, including the newbuilt fast cruiseferries Moby Wonder, Moby Freedom and Moby Aki. Around 2003 Moby Lines entered an agreement with Warner Bros. to paint their vessels in liveries featuring Looney Tunes characters. However, only the larger ships have such liveries, the company's smaller ships either have similar graphics not featuring the Looney Tunes characters, or simply the Moby Lines' whale logo.

Fleet

Current fleet

References

• Moby Lines at Simplon Postcards, retrieved 3. 7. 2007

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Moby Lines

• Company website
• (Swedish) Moby Lines at Fakta om Fartyg
• MobyAki.it