The first appearance of the company in the ferry business was made possible when the roll-on/roll-off vessel Duke of Holland was acquired in 1969.

The operations at Great Yarmouth were located at Atlas Terminal in the area of town known as South Denes.

Norfolkline's UK head office was located at Atlas House (now demolished) whilst the operator had the entire Atlas Terminal quayside, a holding yard on the other side of the road as well as other facilities around the town.

It is widely rumoured, that the town's outer harbour, which was first proposed around the 1960s/1970s was the main reason for the operator pulling the plug.

The nineties started with the merger of Norfolk Line with rail transport specialist Skandi in 1995 introducing rail freight services to the company, followed by 4 new vessels that were added to the Norfolk Line fleet (1996) and the opening of a container route between Rotterdam (Holland) to Waterford (Ireland) in 1997.

The year after that the company was renamed Norfolkline and the refrigerated transport business was launched in Belfast.

Norfolkline operated logistics services providing refrigerated transportation of goods by road, rail, and sea from locations across Europe with routes from/to Belgium, Denmark, the United Kingdom, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, and the Netherlands.