by Lloyd's List
1 November 2024 (Lloyd's List) - PIRAEUS, Greece’s largest port, has unveiled record quarterly revenues and profits in spite of the effects that cancellation of itineraries through the Suez Canal have been having on its container transhipment business.
The port, which is under majority ownership of Cosco Shipping Ports, posted a 6.2% increase in third-quarter revenues, which reached €174.9m ($189.8m).
Net income after taxes grew by 6.6% to €70.2m.
Container business accounts for close to 60% of the port’s revenue. However, the Piraeus Port Authority said that the cruise sector and the port’s car terminal were also to the fore in contributing to recent results.
Pier I, the port’s original containership pier that remains directly managed by the Cosco-controlled PPA, contributed revenue of €36.7m in the first nine months, with Piers II and III, which are operated by CSP subsidiary Piraeus Container Terminal under a long-term concession, contributing €59.8m.
According to the PPA, revenue from the concession had decreased over the whole nine-month period but had shown a “positive change” in the third quarter.
CSP data showed that PCT’s third-quarter throughput decreased by 3.8%.
It said that throughput was “impacted by services routing [around] the Cape of Good Hope”.
Nonetheless, the decrease was the smallest year-on-year reduction in throughput of any quarter so far this year.
PCT throughput for the first three quarters of the year fell by 9.7% to 3.1m teu.
Third-quarter throughput of nearly 1.1m teu was up from just 931,300 teu in the first quarter of 2024.
Meanwhile, the PPA said that Pier 1 of the container terminal recorded a 3.5% increase in cargo, reversing a decline in the first half of the year.
This included an “impressive” 30% increase in third-quarter transhipment traffic, which increased to 93,788 teu.
The gain helped to curb the nine-month reduction in transshipment business at the pier to 11.5%.
Reduced throughput at Piraeus this year has contrasted with other overseas ports in CSP, with Cosco ports in Spain, CSP Zeebrugge and CSP Abu Dhabi all chalking up impressive gains.
