ECONOMY

Foreign clusters arrive to woo local shipping companies

Foreign clusters arrive to woo local shipping companies

Following a series of shows and personal meetings in Athens over the last few months, foreign shipping clusters are returning en masse to present incentives in a bid to lure local shipping companies away.

The list of participants at this June’s Posidonia 2016 exhibition is long and has not closed yet, noted the shipping showpiece event’s chief executive Theodoros Vokos while speaking to Kathimerini. The catalysts, he explained, are the strengthening of global competition as well as the timing.

With Greek shipowners controlling over 17 percent of the global capacity, the biggest by shippers of any one nation by some distance, this market share is predictably something of a holy grail for shipping hubs the world over.

Among the suitors who will arrive in Athens this summer to try and persuade Greek shippers to join them will be the traditional shipping centers of Singapore, Hong Kong, Cyprus and Malta. A new national stand from Luxembourg will make its debut appearance at the show, to present the “Cluster Maritime Luxembourgeois.”

Participants in the show with parallel events and presentations will also include Dubai Maritime City from the United Arab Emirates, the Shanghai Maritime & Finance Excellence Center from China, and the Vancouver International Maritime Center from Canada.

Several other representatives of foreign maritime centers and of all registers wishing to promote their flags will be present at Posidonia, as demand for stands has exceeded that recorded at the previous event in 2014, according to Vokos. This is happening in a period when the government and the shipping community are at odds with the European Commission over the taxation of shipping in Greece.

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