The duty free and travel retail industry's sixth largest global retailer AS Tallink Grupp reports that its ferries and cruise lines transported a total of 795,569 passengers in June, representing an impressive 18% increase on

last year with the largest growth seen on routes between Latvia-Sweden, Estonia-Sweden and Finland-Estonia.

Tallink – with DF&TR sales of around $600m in 2008 from all routes transported 72,859 passengers (+110 %) on the Latvia-Sweden route, 94,561 (+23 %) on the Estonia-Sweden route and 310,583 (+17 %) on the Finland-Estonia route in the month of June.

On the route between Finland and Sweden, Tallink transported 305,783 passengers (+10 %) and on the Finland-Germany route 11,783 passengers (-33 %).The company says that the results of the Germany-Finland route were influenced by a reduction in the number of vessels from three to two.

In addition, Tallink transported 95,137 passenger vehicles (+27 %) while the number of cargo units decreased by 24% to 20,304 in June.

AS Tallink Grupp is easily the leading passenger shipping company on the Baltic Sea owning 20 vessels under the brands of Tallink and Silja Line on seven different shipping routes. At the same time, Tallink currently has 6,900 employees in Estonia, Finland, Sweden, Latvia, Russia and Germany.