Business Briefs: Viking Line Ferry Raises Estonian Flag, Laima to End Operations in Estonia
Finnish shipping company Viking Line is set to hoist the Estonian flag on one of its ferries, bringing 200 jobs.
Viking XPRS, which services the Tallinn-Helsinki route, will hire new staff through a staffing service, transferring the previous staff to another ship, ETV reported today.
Viking XPRS was previously under the Swedish flag.
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Latvia's Laima said it will move production out of Estonia.
The confectionery will outsource its ice cream production to a Latvian company instead of Estonia's Premia Foods, which had been making Laima's ice cream since mid-2011, LETA reported on Thursday.
Head of Premia Food's board, Katre Kõvask, said that the change will have no significant effect on daily business activities.
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Eesti Energia carried out a bond issue on Thursday that will raise an additional 100 million euros in investment mainly to be used to complete the company's new Auvere power plant.
It supplements a 300 million euro issue in April of 2012.
The redemption date is 2018.
Forty international investors took part and the issue was oversubscribed by four times.
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Water utility Tallinna Vesi's Q4 net profit was 6.2 million euros - 28.5 percent less than a year ago with approximately the same revenue of 13.8 million euros.
The drop in profits was due to the fact that the water and sewer mains expansion plan was ended and there were no profits earned last year from compensation of pipelines, said the company.
Overhead costs increased by about 20 percent due to higher legal and consultation fees, mainly because of the company's long running dispute over its rates. The Competition Authority maintains that the company's profits have been too high to justify rate hikes.
The company's total 2013 profit was 19.9 million euros, 11.8 percent less than in 2012.