A collapse in Red Sea traffic in the wake of the Houthi campaign against Israeli-linked shipping has caused no big harm to the business of Greece’s two biggest ports so far.
Port authorities in Piraeus and Thessaloniki even saw profit increase in the first half of the year, with solid revenue from car and passenger traffic mitigating weaker container throughput.
The Cosco-controlled Piraeus Port Authority (OLP) posted net income of €40.4m ($45.1m) between January and June, up 4.4% from the same period last year.
“Instability and special circumstances continue to exist in the Middle East — our company however, managed not only to not be impacted but continued its activity with improving performance and results,” commented OLP president Lin Ji.
The profit increase was even steeper at the Thessaloniki Port Authority (OLTH), which is controlled by Ivan Savvidis — a Russian businessman of ethnic Greek roots with several other business activities in the country.
Greece’s second-biggest port saw profit climb by 62% year-on-year to €13.6m.
In contrast with Thessaloniki, container business did suffer in Piraeus — though to a smaller extent than initially feared from a double onslaught of Red Sea disruption and the inclusion of inbound EU traffic into the bloc’s emissions trading scheme.
Container throughput at OLP’s Pier 1 dropped by a relatively modest 7.9% year-on-year to 253,552 teu, as a 27% decline in transshipment business was mitigated by a 41% increase in the Greek container business.
Piers 2 and 3 — two big container ship facilities that Cosco pays concession fees for to OLP while holding them in a separate, fully-owned corporate structure — saw throughput dwindle by 10.7% between January and August to 2.7m teu.
This is about the same drop as the one experienced by two other Cosco ports in the region — Kumport Liman in Istanbul and the Red Sea Gateway Terminal in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
OLP managed to outweigh slower container throughput with rising income from its cruise and car business.
Cruise-related income rose at an annual pace of 13% in the first half to €10m after 288 cruise ships arrived in Piraeus, up from 272 in the same period of 2022.
In a more surprising development, OLP's car terminal actually managed to benefit from supply chain disruptions.
Even though the number of new cars shipped through Piraeus dropped by about half between January and June to 45,297 units, OLP’s car terminal revenue soared by 60% to €16.5m, as cars stuck in its terminal paid storage fees for much longer.
