Stena Line has opened its new passenger terminal at Victoria Terminal 2 in Belfast Harbour following £3m works to accommodate increase passenger traffic on its Birkenhead route.

The original terminal building has been extended and refurbished with a new departure lounge with capacity for 200 people, a café area and a passenger waiting area.

Externally, there are three new check-in booths for passenger vehicles, and an extended queuing area for passengers in vehicles and coaches.

Paul Grant, Stena Line’s Irish Sea trade director, said: “It is great to see the next stage of the investment in our Belfast operations come to fruition.  In partnership with Belfast Harbour, we have taken our old and dated building, with limited space, and totally modernised the design with a great new range of improved facilities. 

"Customers using our new modern vessels needed a new modern terminal to serve them and now they have that, to ensure they get the best travel experience from departure to arrival.

In Association with

"Over the past 26 years we have grown our Belfast hub into the biggest within the Stena group across all of our European routes, and we will continue to invest and improve our services in Belfast and Northern Ireland.”

Michael Robinson, port director at Belfast Harbour, said: “We are really pleased to see the newly refurbished VT2 open to passengers after a significant investment from both Stena Line and Belfast Harbour.

"We believe that providing modern facilities for our customers and investing in the Port’s core infrastructure is essential to supporting our partners’ ambitions, and to achieving our goal of becoming one of the world’s leading regional ports. 

"As passenger traffic levels on Stena Line’s services continues to grow,  we are committed to supporting our partners at Stena Line, as they meet  increasing customer demand.”

The upgrade works took more than a year to complete and were undertaken while current ferry services were maintained.

Stena Line has invested significantly in its Belfast operations in recent years, adding two new ferries to the route, and increasing passenger and freight capacity by over a third, which in turn has led to record traffic volumes on the Belfast-Birkenhead route.

Swedish-headquarted Stena Line has 5,100 employees and an annual turnover of 14bn Swedish Krona (€1.3bn). The company is Northern Ireland's largest ferry operator.

Photo: (l-r) Paul Grant and Michael Robinson.