Today the group headed to the Limassol New Port to meet with companies like DP World, Eurogate, and P & O Maritime. We started off with DP World and P & O Maritime where we learned about the structure of the port, some of the services they offer, and how many ships visit their ports. First off, their port is broken down into three different areas: the New Passenger Terminal, Oil and Gas, and Cargo Areas. We then learned about their towing service where they have tug boats that help move other boats to get where they need to be. We also learned about their pilotage service where they offer a very qualified pilot who knows the local waters to help guide ships in and out of the port. They also offer an oil spill response service too! When it comes to the frequency of vessels visiting their ports, we learned that about 20 vessels come per week. As compared to the US, Cyprus relies on these ports and their services to keep everything moving as planned and when something doesn’t go to plan, to fix it accordingly. Since Cyprus is an island nation, they heavily rely on shipping to bring items into the country. If the ports were not well managed, the economy could face various issues. It’s important that they have multiple companies running multiple services when it comes to the ports as if one company has issues or certain trouble dealing with a problem, the others may not.
After meeting with DP World and P & O Maritime, we moved across the port to go and meet with people from Eurogate. At Eurogate we learned that every year they bring in roughly 12 million 20 equivalent units (TEUs) a year. Also, their current TEU capacity is 500k, however, they have plans in the future to double the capacity. One thing I found very interesting during their presentation was the fact they developed their own in-house software of AI that helps map out the most efficient routes for their drivers to take while moving containers around the port without having any conflict in traffic.
Something cool that happened today was the fact that we were able to eat lunch on a yacht. This wasn’t a part of the original plan and we were all psyched when we heard about the surprise.
After lunch, we were joined by Port Authority executives who gave us a deep insight into some of their challenges while also giving us an inside scoop in their plans for the future.