Greece's Port Thessaloniki Targets Bulgarian Companies

Port Thessaloniki CEO Aggeloudis (left) with Tsvetan Simeonov (right), head of the BCCI. Photo by V+O

Greece's Aegean Port Thessaloniki has announced a campaign to lure more Bulgarian businesses to use its services.

Stylianos Aggeloudis, Chairman and CEO, of Thessaloniki Port Authority, presented in Bulgaria's capital Sofia Wednesday the vision that one of the major Greek ports has for attracting Bulgarian traders as well as for integrating the sea and railway transport services of Bulgaria and Greece.

"Our new more competitive services should help Bulgarian companies realize that Port Thessaloniki can be one of their ports as well," Aggeloudis told journalists in Sofia before meeting with representatives of the major Bulgarian business organizations.

In his words, Bulgaria ranks fourth among the users of Port Thessaloniki after Greece, Macedonia, and Serbia in terms the volume of cargo and goods.

Aggeloudis explicitly emphasized that Wednesday's meetings and news conference in Sofia were in fact the first such step by the Thessaloniki Port Authority designed to promote its services among Bulgarian businessmen.

He did mention several rather novel ideas such as the readiness of the Thessaloniki Port Authority to support combined modes of transportation including Port Thessaloniki and the Bulgarian Black Sea ports Varna and Burgas plus the railway connections between them, as well as the construction of smaller and larger logistics centers in Bulgaria to support such transit.

However, the representatives of Port Thessaloniki failed to provide any specificity making it clear that the suggestions to integrate the Greek and Bulgarian ports and railway networks in a more coherent manner still remained only in the realm of general ideas.

The development of Port Thessaloniki presupposes development of the Pan-European Transport Corridors 4 and 10, which pass through Bulgaria, including by linking the Danube River and the Mediterranean. The importance of these routes was underscored by the port representatives even though no specific pro-active steps were outline.

Stylianos pointed out that in his view Thessaloniki, which is the largest transit port in the Balkans, and Bulgaria's Varna and Burgas on the Black Sea were not competitors.

He believes that Bulgarian companies should use whichever port is closest to them and provides more competitive prices rather than stick with the ports of their own nation by default; he vowed that he would advise Greek companies to do the same, should Bulgarian ports present better conditions.

Port Thessaloniki is expanding its capacity with additional facilities on an area of 550 000 square meters worth EUR 240 M; part of the funds for the expansion will be provided by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.

In 2009, Port Thessaloniki serviced 14.4 million tonnes of cargo, including 270 000 containers and 3.5 million tonnes of bulk cargoes. About 7 000 of the containers were destined to and from Bulgaria.

Even though the volume of Bulgarian trade through the port almost doubled in the first eight months of 2010 year-on-year, it is still far from the 30 000 Bulgaria-destined containers serviced in 2007.

According to Aggeloudis, the Bulgarian companies turned away from Port Thessaloniki in 2007-2008 as a result of a strike of the port workers protesting against an unsuccessful privatization agreement.

Port Thessaloniki is located on an area of 1.55 million square meters, and includes logistics facilities with an area 600 000. The expansion of the port will include 150 000 square meters of new logistics facilities.

Thessaloniki Port Authority SA has a capital of EUR 124 M; the Greek government has a 74.27% stake in it.

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