Today we went to a lot of different shipping companies that are located on the Limassol port. We started with DP World, which is based in Dubai and in the B-2-B (Business to Business) Market. They specialize in shipping and cruises. They opened their first port in 1972. They only have 76 staff members, which surprises me because I assumed they were bigger. Their operations are divided into 3 areas including a passenger terminal, an oil and gas area, and a cargo area. During Covid their numbers got affected a lot. Very few people wanted to go on cruises. 2022 though has been DP World’s best year. They said that they get a lot of cruises. This is not very good for the port because they are not really profitable, as the people on the cruise don’t really pay more to stop there. The country of Cyprus makes a lot from cruises though. The people from the cruise go into the city and buy a lot and get fancier meals, which boosts Cyprus’ economy. On average DP World have 15-20 vessels per week come in for the week. They also talked a bunch about how they are trying to get more women to join. I think it’s a really good initiative but I didn’t agree with some of the ways they wanted to do it. Overall the company was really interesting.
After listening to DP world, a representative from P&O, which is in charge of the port, came to talk to us. They told us about the logistics of the port. There are 3 terminals there: Eurogate, DP World, and marine service. The port has approximately 3500 vessels per year stop buy. The port also has many items that are there all of the time including: 5 marine pilots, 4 tug boats, and 2 pilot boats. One thing that I found interesting is that it is mandatory for all employees to speak Greek. I feel like this is important so that there are no communication barriers. I also like how they give a buffer period for this so that if you really want to work there, and are trying to learn Greek. P&O will also help find classes for that person to learn Greek.
After that we drove across the port to Eurogate. We took a little bus tour around their facilities. We saw how they stored containers, how they moved them around and how they loaded them on the ships. After this we went into a little room for a presentation to learn about them. Eurogate is a fairly new company, it was formed in 2015. They are the only terminal for containerized goods in Cyprus and have a capacity to store up to 500,000 TEU. They use cranes to move the containers. Each crane costs around $12 million. Covid affected their business a bit, and their peak year across all categories was 2019, so they are still recovering.
After Eurogate we went to the Old Port of Limassol and had lunch on a boat. The people in charge of the Cyprus Port Authority rented the boat for us and got us lunch. The boat was really impressive and it is so kind of them to do this for us. The boat was huge and there were so many different things to do on it. We later had a Q&A session with them. It was really interesting to hear all about the ports and all of the different things they do there.