Ports to boost Greece as trade hub
Igoumenitsa, Thessaloniki and Alexandroupoli, complementary and antagonistic to Piraeus
Three ports in northern Greece are the focus of intense interest by international maritime transport firms, highlighting the country’s strategic location and role as a stable country on the outskirts of Europe at a time of war in Ukraine and heightened risk of disruptions in international trade.
The latest developments indicate that the three ports, Igoumenitsa, in the northwest, Thessaloniki, in the north, and Alexandroupoli, in the northeast, the so-called “northern axis,” will become an alternative to Piraeus, Greece’s largest port, and open up to new markets while also taking away some of Piraeus’ market share.
Last month, France’s CMA CGM, the world’s third largest container shipping company, added new connections from Thessaloniki to Northern Europe and Turkey, with ships among the largest ever to have anchored at the port.
At the same time, having decided that the port of Alexandroupoli will remain in its hands, the Greek state, through the Hellenic Republic Asset Development Fund, is planning a complete upgrade, with new and bigger piers, equipment modernization and dredging to deepen the port.
With all three ports connected to the Egnatia Highway and its feeder roads connecting it to the Balkans, they could compete for the bulk of trade both regional and beyond
The upgrade will help the port, besides its newly upgraded role in moving military equipment and personnel, to also become a hub for bulk cargo, especially grain from Ukraine, as well as for containers. The upgrade is expected to be partly funded by the European Union’s Recovery and Resilience Facility.
Italy’s Grinaldi Group, which paid €84.2 million for a 67% stake in the port of Igoumenitsa, is preparing investments that will significantly improve the loading and offloading of trucks to and from Italy. The project will begin in the first half of 2023.
With all three ports connected to the Egnatia Highway and its feeder roads connecting it to the Balkans, as well as the railway network, they could compete for the bulk of trade both regional and beyond and become serious competitors, not only to Piraeus, but also to major Black Sea and Adriatic ports.
The upgrade of the feeder roads will begin as soon as construction group Terna takes charge of Egnatia. The upgrade of the railway line from Alexandroupoli to Ormenio, in Greece’s far northeast, which will improve connections to Bulgaria and beyond, will turn the port of Alexandroupoli into a major gateway to Eastern Europe, effectively bypassing the Bosporus Strait, businessmen and diplomats believe.
Thessaloniki is already Greece’s most important port for bulk cargo and aims to become a major part of the local supply route. Industrialists in northern Greece say that the new routes started by CMA CGM can also help move cargo fast to Northern Europe, as well as Turkey and the Middle East, bypassing the port of Piraeus, which is further away from these markets by road. Thessaloniki could become an additional major part of China’s Maritime Silk Road, although, having acquired ownership of the port of Piraeus through Cosco, China is heavily invested there, with Prime Minister Li Keqiang calling Piraeus “the pearl of the Mediterranean.”
The Alexandroupoli-Ormenio rail upgrade will require spending €1.33 billion to electrify the route and double its carrying capacity. The reward will be the capacity to carry the multimodal (sea-land) transport of goods to and from the whole of Asia and Eastern Europe, including the Black Sea countries.
In upgrading the Igoumenitsa port, the Grimaldi Group also wants to create a logistics center that would significantly increase the number of trucks using the Egnatia as a gateway to European markets.
