Israeli firms eye investment in port of Kavala
Israeli container shipping companies Allalouf and ZIM have expressed a lively interest in all ports under the umbrella of the Kavala Port Authority (OLK) in eastern Macedonia, the chairman and chief executive of OLK Adam Cosmidis said on Friday.
Investment interest from Israel had also been expressed during the visit by the management of OLK to Israel in June, where the comparative advantages of the new port of Kavala were presented. The new commercial port in the area of Nea Karvali is located close to Egnatia Odos Highway, which runs through Epirus, Macedonia and Thrace, and neighbors the Hellenic Fertilizers ELFE company that has its own port facilities.
However, as Cosmidis told the Athens-Macedonia News Agency, a vital condition for this cooperation to take place is the opening of access by rail to the ports of Bulgaria in the Black Sea by sidesteping the Bosphorus and Dardanelles straits where Israeli vessels are no longer welcome after the tension the bilateral relations between Turkey and Israel. The railway connection has been planned in the context of the transeuropean Sea2Sea program that will link the Aegean and the Black Sea.
