Cosco Pacific Wins Tender

To operate container terminals

The Chinese ports investor Cosco Pacific Ltd. looks set to upgrade and manage two of the three container shipping berths in the Greek port of Piraeus. The company said on Friday that it had been notified by the Piraeus Port Authority (PPA) that it was the highest bidder for the concession.

The news has been welcomed by Greece’s Merchant Marine Minister George Voulgarakis. He predicted turnover at the port would “increase substantially”, boosting profits for companies in the sector.

The news is also likely to be welcomed by the port’s bunker suppliers. Although Piraeus remains one of the major bunkering hubs in the region, its bunker volumes fell in 2007.

Players blamed a drop in container traffic and industrial unrest in the face of government plans to privatise terminal operations.

Christopher Tzouvanakis, Chairman of the Vestalco Group, which includes the global bunker supplier Vestoil Ltd, told a Bunkerworld Forum in Athens last year that privatising the terminals provided one of the few opportunities for reversing the decline of the bunker market.

Voulgarakis was quoted on Friday as saying that Cosco Pacfic would hire 1,000 workers, doubling the present number at the two terminals. He said port workers had been wrong to have opposed privatisation.

Reports said Cosco would pay an initial $77 million (50 million euros) to the PPA, followed by $910 million (591 million euros) in rent during a 35 year concession.

The size of the Piraeus bunker market was last year estimated to be between 2.8 million and 2.9 million metric tonnes (mt).