The past couple of years have been good for Greece’s coastal passenger shipping industry, which is Europe’s largest.
Plummeting fuel prices lopped off much of ferry operators’ costs putting them back in profit. Revenues rose as they carried tens of thousands of illegal immigrants arriving from Turkey, with European taxpayers footing much of the bill.
However, that windfall masked the industry’s underlying problems that are slowly being exposed again, says XRTC, a Piraeus-based consultancy firm that has been following the sector for 17 years.
