We spent the first half of our day at Limassol’s New Port, where we had 4 presentations. Our first presentation was with the Cyprus Ports Authority (CPA). Limassol Port is the largest commercial port in Cyprus and its jurisdiction extends over all port areas, except the closed ports of Northern Cyprus. Famagusta port used to be largest, until the Turkish Invasion. The CPA is made up of a bpard of 9 members and their rules cover commercial services, public functions, and to regulate. Their core services are 1) government departments, such as customs, and the health dept., and 2) private sector. The port includes both cargo and passenger activity, and even though it is the largest and most prominent port in Cyprus, it is actually quite small in the grand scheme of things worldwide. I found it very interesting that there is Turkish embargo, which means no goods from/passing through Cyprus are allowed to go to any port deemed as Turkish territory, except cruises. Instead, these specific goods must go to a different country before entering Turkey. All services within the port are provided by the private sector. These services are Eurogate, DP World Limassol, and P&O Maritime Cyprus Ltd, all three which we had the opportunity to visit next. DP World tackles pretty much everything but containers, but their main focus is automotive trade, as well as oil and gas. Their goals include upping their percentage of female workers, education, and ocean preotection, as well as become the port of choice in the coming years. P&O Maritime is completely made up of Cypriot and Greek employees, as one of their goals is to employ as many locals as possible, and be an equal opportunity employer. Their main focus is health and safety of port management, unions, growth, and collaboration. Lastly we visited Eurogate, which only focuses on containers. It is Europe’s independent leading shipping line container terminal network. They pride themselves on focusing on efficiency, with 20/25 cranes per hour, average vessel stay within port being 11-17 hours, container pickup after discharge being about 15-20 mins, and they have 24/7 working hours. Although this seems like a lot, they do value work/life balance and make it a priority to provide their employees with the resources they need, as well as encourage participation among leisure activity with fellow employees.

Both DP World and Eurogate specialize in ship management, which is one of the seven modes of transportation within the supply chain, which means, of course, they are the transportation link of the chain. Cyprus offers an excellent location for this, due to it being in the Mediterranean with access to many major countries like Greece and Italy, as well as the Suez Canal. As mentioned above, these companies focus on efficiency instead of responsiveness, as ships, as a mode of transport are the slowest. These companies act as intermediaries for companies and products, and since Cyprus is an island, most products must be imported, which is how these ship management companies thrive. It was super interesting to get to see how Eurogate uses cranes to load their containers onto the huge cargo ships. Seeing it up close and personal like that really puts into perspective how large scale the operations truly are. P&O Maritime acts as an aid in port solutions, which is also equally important. These were very interesting and informative visits! We couldn’t take many photos at the port today, due to military ships, which would be a breach of national security, I believe.