1987 Eurotunnel Share Offer commercial.

Eurotunnel plc (in the UK) and Eurotunnel SA (in France) make up the Eurotunnel Group, founded in August 1986, which manages and operates the Channel Tunnel between the UK and France.

It operates the car shuttle and earns revenue on other trains (freight by EWS and SNCF and passenger service by Eurostar) passing through the tunnel. However, passenger numbers are around one-third of the original projections.

Construction

The tunnel cost around £10bn, over double its original estimate of £4.9bn to build. Heavily indebted, the company has been struggling with the interest on the £10bn loan that has been taken to construct the tunnel. In order to deal with this, many cuts in services have been introduced with varying success and a third of the staff have been laid off.

The Eurotunnel was once expected to take nearly all business away from cross-channel ferry companies.

As part of the original deal, Eurotunnel has had to invest in research into another two-storey road tunnel, but for cars only, as the fumes of other vehicles would be too high in volume.

Info taken from Wikipedia