Face to Face with Jeff Marston | Business Cornwall

by Nick Eyriey

Face to Face with Jeff Marston, Chief executive of the Isles of Scilly Steamship company

Jeff Marston had originally intended on just helping out the Isles of Scilly Steamship Company board with some advice in a time of need, but he ended up staying on to become its chief executive.

That was eight years ago. Since then, Marston has helped turn the company into an extremely successful cash-rich business, with a turnover in the region of £10M.

The airline division, Skybus, has just celebrated its 25th anniversary with a record year, while the ferry and freight businesses continue to perform. And most recently, the Penzance-based company acquired the town’s old dry dock business.

Business Cornwall drops into the Isles of Scilly Steamship Company offices and finds Marston in a confident mood as he contemplates further growth for the famous old firm.

Business Cornwall: Can we start by running through the different company operations. It’s far more than just the Scillonian isn’t it?

Jeff Marston: We are primarily interested in getting people and freight to the Isles of Scilly, by sea and by air. By air we predominantly take people, although we also take some mail. By sea we take

people on the Scillonian III- and the majority of the people who visit the Isles still travel by sea – and we also have the Gry Maritha for freight. And at the end of August we added the Penzance dry dock to our portfolio. We have historically done marine engineering for our own purposes.

BC: So you’re now servicing other vessels as well?

JM: Yes, there’s a barge in there at the moment and when that goes out, the Gry Maritha will go in. So that’s an additional facility. There are peripheral areas of our business as well. We have the inter island launch service between St Marys and all the off islands, which is the freight vessel and also a small vessel which operates the mail contract. And we also operate Lands End Airport as our own airport, and it’s a fully equipped airport. It has an air traffic control unit, a rescue and fire service unit and a fully equipped engineering team to European standards. And we also have our own training school up there.

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