On our second day in Cyprus, we started bright and early at 8am. We enjoyed a traditional Cyprian breakfast at the hotel once again, including coffee, fruits, meats, and eggs. For our first business visits of the trip, we drove for an hour and a half down to the southern city of Limassol. As we approached, I was amazed by the amount of cruise ships and tankers that had been parked in the harbor. They were massive blobs of white against the piercing blue of the Mediterranean sea, which was quite a site to see from shore.

In Limassol, we had our first company visit of the trip, visiting the company Medochemie. Medochemie is a company that reverse engineers drug products in order to find cheaper and better formulas with the same effectiveness as the original drugs. We spoke with multiple executives from different branches within the company, including supply chains and quality assurance. We learned a lot from this visit about traditional supplier-manufacturer-distributor supply chains in this meeting. For instance, Medochemie opened factories in strategic locations to provide better service to local communities and be better connected with foreign suppliers. We learned that Medochemie has yet to extend into US markets due to the rigorous process required by the FDA for drug approval. We also toured one of the company’s warehouses, where they showcased guillotine doors, and a storage-efficient space created by using moving shelves.

After leaving Medochemie, we ate lunch at UNIC, which was much better than the dining facilities I had been used to on campus. After lunch, we met with our final company of the day, Wargaming. Wargaming is known for its ‘World of Tanks’ line of videogames, focused around the success of their MMO game, World of Tanks. This company was a very interesting visit on a supply chain trip as the products they sell are entirely virtual, and the company doesn’t follow the traditional ‘manufacturer’ supply chain we’ve studied in class and at Medochemie. Instead, the presenters focused more on the design process behind creating a videogame, as that would technically be considered the supply chain of the company.

Overall, today was a great introduction to the business visits portion of our +3 trips, and I can’t wait to see what tomorrow holds!