Agoudimos Lines was once a major player in the Greek ferry scene, but in the closing days of 2024 its last ship was auctioned for scrap.
The impending departure of the 5,100-gt Penelope A (built 1972) will no doubt come as a relief for the Elefsis Port Authority, which has been stuck with it since 2013.
The authority, alarmed by the ship’s deteriorating condition, had to take the drastic step of declaring the Penelope A a dangerous and hazardous vessel to expedite a swift removal from its moorings alongside a sunken floating dry dock in Elefsis Bay.
To do this, the auction tender was structured along the lines of a wreck removal contract with the contractor obliged to remove the ship from the bay and deliver it to a European Union-approved ship recycling yard.
The contract to remove the Penelope A, according to an announcement by the port authority, was awarded to Marshall Islands-registered Valona Shiptrade.
It agreed to buy the ship for €361,000 ($371,512) and has lodged a letter of guarantee of €36,100 as security for the successful removal of the ship.
Valona is contractually bound to remove the Penelope A within three months.
Ferry sector sources with knowledge of the ship told TradeWinds that as far as wreck removals go, it is a straightforward job.
The long laid-up ship is still afloat, albeit in a decrepit condition.
Work will have to be done to secure it for a two-day tow across the Aegean to a recycling facility in the Turkish port of Aliaga.
Workers are said to already be on board the ship making it seaworthy enough for the voyage. At the same time, the Agoudimos Lines branding is being painted over.
Agoudimos was a significant player in the Greek ferry sector in the 1990s, amassing a fleet of older ropaxes acquired on the secondhand market.
The Penelope A was built as the Horsa for Sealink, the ferry arm of the then state-owned British Rail.
These ships operated ferry services across the Adriatic between Greece, Albania and Italy, as well as domestic services from the port of Rafina to nearby islands in the Aegean.
By the 2010s the company was beginning to suffer from financial distress, with some of its ships seized in Italian ports and later auctioned off for further trading or scrap.
The Penelope A was the last of the company’s ships in service when it attempted to operate a summer season of domestic voyages in 2103.
This came to an ignominious end that August. While docked in Rafina, the crew staged a sit-in demanding they get paid their back wages.
That was the end of the old ship. The following year it was towed to an anchorage in Elefsina and left to rot.
Attempts were made periodically to auction the ship, but the process got caught up in a Greek bankruptcy case, mainly because there is no one overriding admiralty court and creditors can lodge claims against the vessel in multiple courts.
Local port authorities are often stuck with a vessel until its condition deteriorates to the point where it is on the verge of sinking.
Only then are the port authorities able to its sale by overriding the jurisdiction of the courts by declaring it a hazard.
Agoudimos Lines was founded by brothers Gerasimos and Dimitris Agoudimos. Gerasmios died in April 2018 and Dimitris died in July 2024.
