A major Falmouth shipping company is to close. Curnow Shipping who have offices in Killigrew Street where more than 15 staff are employed failed in their bid to renew a Government contract to operate the RMS St Helena passenger vessel for the next five years. After considerable thought, directors have decided to call it a day.

The Falmouth office block they moved into from Porthleven is up for sale and there will be some redundancies. The Falmouth shipping agency of G.C. Fox, acquired by Curnow two years ago is understood to be for sale.

The vessel for which the company is well known, the RMS St Helena, will arrive in Falmouth later this month under the Curnow banner for the last time. When it leaves on August 28 heading for the South Atlantic it will be under the management of Andrew Weir Shipping who won the contract two months ago.

The founders of Curnow Shipping, current managing director Simon Sugrue and former partner Andrew Bell of Porthleven, who left the company last year following a boardroom shuffle, are understood to be disappointed.

Mr Sugrue, 61, says he will now retire. He did not want it to happen this way.

In May this year members of the Serious Fraud Office entered the Falmouth offices of Curnow and took away files and documents. A spokesman for the SFO told the Packet yesterday that their inquiries were still on going.

The timing of the SFO's visit to Curnow Shipping could not have been worse. It was days before they were due to present their bid to run the St Helena for another term.