Wednesday, May 17th
Today we began our day by visiting Vassiliko Port and Cement Works. Their cement business was established 60 years ago and since they created their line in 2011, they have been devoted to improving their sustainability. Vassiliko is the largest heavy industry in Cyprus and they own 5 quarries as well as many pieces of large machinery for processing of the cement from start to finish. One thing I learned at Vassiliko that really surprised me was that concrete is the second most consumed material in the world after water. Globally, 75 billion tons of concrete are used every year and the main ingredient in all of that concrete is cement. For this reason, Vassiliko has a major role in production for the island and surrounding areas and cement is the third largest exporting product on the island. Due to the need for their products, Vassiliko built an on-site port in 1983. It is the only industrial port in Cyprus and it serves 300 ships per year. This company visit was really fun because we got to wear hardhats and orange vests which made it feel like we were more immersed in the experience.
Our next company visit of the day was to the Mediterranean Shipmanagement Company which is a family company and is one of the largest ship management companies in the world. MSC manages cargo ships, cruise ships, and ferries. They have 150,000 employees, 70 terminals, 23 million shipping containers shipped annually, shipping in 155 countries, 730 vessels managed, and 23 vessels owned. As a company, they are very dedicated to caring about people and the environment. MSC’s main focus for emerging technology is to minimize carbon emissions and trying to create carbon capture engines aboard their ships. As a company they seem to be very well organized and have good values, but their company presentation was chaotic to say the least. They were very excited to have us there and basically threw us a party which was very different from every other company we visited on the trip. They had most of their top employees come to present to us including the CEO. On top of that, the pizza they got was exclusively chicken and mushroom which is incredibly unusual. The whole thing was honestly comical and definitely put me in a good mood. Definitely the most entertaining presentation we saw on the entire trip.
