Collapsed Hythe ferry assets acquired out of liquidation by pier owner

The Hythe Pier Company, the Hampshire-based owner of the historic 700-yard Hythe pier and its Edwardian electric railway, has acquired the assets of the collapsed Hythe & Southampton Ferry Company Limited from liquidators Leonard Curtis, in a deal aimed at securing the long-term future of one of the oldest passenger crossings on England's south coast.

The acquisition, completed on 19 June 2026 for an undisclosed sum, brings the ferry vessel, its pontoon, and the leasehold interests in the pier and a Southampton mooring back under single ownership for the first time in years. It draws a line under a drawn-out collapse that has left the route between Hythe and Southampton suspended for almost two years.

The Hythe ferry has carried passengers across Southampton Water since the pier opened in 1881, with the 10-minute crossing offering Waterside residents a direct link to the centre of Southampton. The pier is served by a narrow-gauge railway that was electrified in 1922 and is widely regarded as the oldest continuously operating public pier train in the world, making the site a piece of working maritime heritage as well as a transport link. Since the service was suspended, passengers have faced a bus alternative of 35 to 40 minutes, severing a connection that had operated for generations and prompting local campaigns to save the route.

The distress that ended in liquidation was structural rather than sudden. The crossing had been loss-making for several years, and its recent history is one of successive rescues rather than a genuine commercial turnaround. Operatorship passed from White Horse Ferries to Blue Funnel in 2017, then to Red Funnel in 2023, and finally to private equity firm Njord Partners in 2025, with each change of hands representing an attempt to keep the service afloat.

The financial fragility was openly acknowledged. When Blue Funnel warned in late 2022 that the route was no longer viable, the company cited rising costs and falling passenger numbers, the same pressures that had dogged the crossing for years. A reprieve followed, but the underlying economics never improved.

The acute trigger came in August 2024, when a failure of the pontoon used to board the ferry forced an immediate suspension of the service. Council estimates put the cost of replacing the pontoon at around £250,000, a capital requirement that proved unbridgeable for an operation already running at a loss. The vessel has remained tied up ever since, with the suspension stretching past 18 months and successive owners declining to commit the funds needed to bring it back into use.

The final catalyst was a change of ownership at the top. Njord Partners, a UK-based investment firm that manages more than €1 billion in assets and holds maritime interests including Ambassador Cruise Line and Geoquip Marine, acquired Red Funnel on 30 September 2025. Red Funnel, the historic Isle of Wight operator, had carried what the new owners described as significant indebtedness that had limited its capacity to invest over the previous five years.

Having taken control, Njord Partners concluded that it was "not best suited" to operate the Hythe route and chose to prioritise its core cross-Solent services to the Isle of Wight. In February 2026 the ferry company was placed on the market, and when no buyer emerged for the business as a going concern, the route was steered towards a formal insolvency.

The Hythe & Southampton Ferry Company Limited entered a Creditors' Voluntary Liquidation, a process initiated on 9 April 2026 and formalised on 30 April 2026. Conrad Beighton and Stewart Goldsmith of Leonard Curtis were appointed Joint Liquidators by the company's members and creditors, with a remit to realise value from the remaining assets for the benefit of creditors.

The asset package was marketed by Hilco Valuation Services under the name Project Hythe. It centred on the ferry vessel, the MV Hythe Scene, a 21-metre catamaran built in 1992 as the Great Expectations for the Gravesend to Tilbury crossing on the Thames, which moved to the Hythe service in 1995 and was renamed in 2017. Alongside the vessel, the sale included the owned pontoon, leasehold interests in the pier and a mooring at Southampton's Town Quay, and the brand and goodwill attached to the long-established crossing.

The buyer, The Hythe Pier Company Limited, was incorporated in September 2024 by Ashleigh Mutimear-MacMillan, who had already purchased the 700-yard pier structure and its railway tracks earlier that year in order to safeguard them. The acquisition of the ferry assets reunites under one owner a collection of infrastructure that had become increasingly fragmented across separate owners over the preceding decades.

Ashleigh Mutimear-MacMillan, Director of The Hythe Pier Company, said: "This acquisition is first and foremost about protecting the future of this historic route, as well as creating an opportunity for a future service across Southampton Water.

"Over the last few decades, different parts of the service have become increasingly fragmented. I therefore saw this as the perfect opportunity to bring many of them back together. Whilst this does not mean the immediate return of a scheduled ferry service, it does give us the best possible foundation to explore what comes next."
She added: "The crossing is a crucial part of Hythe's heritage, and I believe that the assets associated with it should remain connected to the pier and the Waterside community it serves."

The new ownership does not represent the immediate return of the ferry. The £250,000 cost of a replacement pontoon, the issue that first forced the suspension, remains outstanding, and a scheduled passenger service cannot resume until that capital requirement is met. The pier itself reopened to the public in April 2026 and remains accessible for a £1 entry fee.

The Hythe Pier Company has said that discussions are already taking place with potential operators and partners about what a future service might look like, and how a sustainable transport link across Southampton Water could be restored. For now, the acquisition has secured the assets in single ownership and kept the prospect of a revived crossing alive, while the work of funding and re-establishing the service remains ahead.

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