Today we took a bus tour of the PCT and Cosco Ports at Piraeus. It is one of Europe’s largest ports and is divided into three main terminals. Our tour started at the entrance driving towards the first terminal. On the way we passed by the empty container storage which was just packed storage containers. Our guide told us that the terminal itself has a capacity of six million TEUs, or twenty-foot equivalent units, which is the standard measure of port capacity. Once we drove by this we moved onto the second terminal, which to our luck had a huge mothership docked. Our guide explained that we were lucky enough to have not only 1 mothership but 2 docked that the time that we toured, she said it was rather rare. The cranes loading and unloading the containers were massive, and the variety of equipment on site was really cool to see. There were huge towering vehicles that could lift containers and drive them around the port, heavy duty forklifts, and even an on site train system. It also stood out to me that although the cranes could be operated remotely from the office, the port actually prefers to have operators physically in the machines. Overall the scale and coordination of the huge port was very impressive and something that I have never seen before.
