LD Lines was a French shipping company, with both roro freight and passenger ferry operations.

It was a subsidiary of Louis Dreyfus Armateurs (LDA), which engages in building, owning, operating, and managing vessels.

[1] LD Lines operated ferry routes on the English Channel, the Bay of Biscay and the Mediterranean Sea.

In September 2014, the Poole-Gijon/Santander route closed and the Norman Asturias was immediately laid up off the coast of Saint Nazaire.

On 13 July 2007 it was reported that LD Lines had ordered a new ro-pax ferry for the route from Singapore Technologies Engineering, with an option for another ship of the same type.

[2] The ship, the Norman Leader, was to be capable of carrying 1215 passengers and enter service in 2010 on the Le Havre–Portsmouth route.

[6] LD Lines was one of five companies invited to tender for the operation of Transmanche Ferries service between Dieppe and Newhaven.

Because the French government did not want the route to be lost, they started a new subsidised company by the name of Transmanche Ferries in April 2001.

After five years of successful service and the arrival of two newbuilds, the government decided to tender the line in a concession.

[8] DFDS later chartered the Barfleur from Brittany Ferries to increase the number of sailings on the new route, she was replaced by the Dieppe Seaways.

On 3 November 2013, LD Lines launched a service between Poole, England and Santander, Spain, using the Norman Asturias.

It was also marketed as a Rosslare-Gijón via Saint-Nazaire service as the Norman Atlantic on its usual Saint-Nazaire–Gijón after its round trip to Rosslare.

In November 2008, LD Lines opened a weekly passenger and freight service between Le Havre and Rosslare, Republic of Ireland.

The Norman Voyager operated on the route departing from Le Havre on Fridays and returning from Rosslare on Saturdays.

The service operated daily with a journey time of around 4 hours 15 minutes, using the ferry Cote d'Albatre.

For this service and the former Dover–Dieppe route, the Côte d’Albâtre was chartered to LD Lines from the Seine Maritime Council.

The Côte d’Albâtre was joined in June 2009 by the 112-metre high-speed catamaran Norman Arrow, which operated four additional round trips on the route.