Today we had another early day filled with more company visits and some fine dining. The first company we visited was a cement company called Vassilike Cement and they are the largest cement production unit in Europe. Cement is one of the main ingredients used to make concrete which is the second most consumed material in the world, making this company extremely valuable. Since this factory is on the island of Cyprus, they are required to import almost all of the materials and fuel used in the factor with the only materials farmed in Cyprus being limestone and clay obtained from the quarries. This company alone requires so much importing and exporting that they own their own port right on the coast near the factory. We had the opportunity to have a tour of the factory and see the process of how the concrete is made along with going to the port and seeing the company export waste.

 While on this tour we also got a chance to see VTTV which is essentially a company that works along with Vassilike. VTTV is a company that stores various chemicals and fuels in extremely large amounts. We had a chance to learn more about how the company is a part of the global supply chain relating oil because of its storing abilities. Companies like this are important because it is often that lots of product is overproduced with a demand for a way to store it. Talking with these companies gave us a good insight on the differences between global supply chains involving a bigger product and supply chains that are within a single company. There were also a lot of questions asked about sustainability since the companies we visited didn’t exactly seem sustainable since they deal with things like oil and factories but we learned that they are developing knew methods to reduce emissions to contribute to sustainability. There is also security of sustainability in the quarries because they are so large and provide so many resources. This was very interesting to hear about when looking into becoming a mechanical engineer because a lot of mechanics and machines need to be regulated in a sustainable way to ensure the environments safety.

After that visit we had lunch and travelled to CMMI, a nonprofit developed in 2019 that specializes in developing new and sustainable marine technology. This visit was very interesting because representatives from each division gave a presentation on their own respective projects, so there was a lot to unpack. the three divisions were tech, science, and social science and they all were doing their own unique work that received funding from certain companies. Some of the projects were not like anything I’ve heard about before because a lot of them involved AI and machine learning. For example, one of the projects were meant to develop autonomous jet skiis that could drive on their own and were able to collect pollinators and make rescues at sea. There were other projects about autonomous marine robots that could survey the ocean and collect data which could be very beneficial.