Today felt like the longest of the days so far, as we had to leave the hotel at 8am to head to Limassol again. We met with multiple companies and even the executives of Cyprus Ports Authority in Limassol who gave us a ton of valuable information.

Once we arrived at the port, our first visit was with Dubai Ports World, whose building looked reminded me of an airport. The representative of DP World was really insightful, and he gave us a lot of important life lessons during our meeting. Throughout the meeting, I learned that DP is a supply chain solutions provider within the shipping industry, and they’re in the sixth year of their 25 year concession with the Republic of Cyprus, making them government regulated. They operate at 195 locations globally and I found it interesting that even though they’re regulated by the government, they’re not considered a monopoly, since their customers have the freedom of choice of which ports to go to in Limassol, Larnaca, or Paphos, including another company in their port, Eurogate.

Conveniently, we visited Eurogate next, and the representative answered some of my confusions on why two competitors would share the same port. He explained to me that healthy competition is promoted within regulations from the Cypriot government, and they place a couple limitations on DP and Eurogate to make sure they each make as much money as possible, which in turn makes the government as much money as possible. After our meeting with Eurogate, we took a tour of the port, and we saw how each contraption worked when berthing ships and moving containers.

After that we got lunch then headed over to the Cyprus Chamber of Commerce to have a conference with the executives of Cyprus Ports Authority. The guys were extremely smart and they broke down what their operations look like as shipping agents. Sustainability is a big priority for them, and they explained that they have explored using renewable energy at their facilities and recently have switched from gas to electric in many aspects.