Three world-class contenders interested in Thessaloniki’s Port

Three high-profile contenders of the logistics sector are showing their interest for the 67% stake of Thessaloniki Port, a fact that clearly demonstrates the important development prospects of the second most important Port of the country.

DP World, ICTSI and the joint venture DIEP-Beltera Ltd-Terminal Link SAS are expected to compete over the Port. The “race” started a few days ago when Morgan Stanley and Piraeus Bank, both acting as financial consultants of HRADF, received the relevant binding offers, making all involved parties particularly pleased with the results.

DP World, a leading company in container terminals management, is one of the three schemes that have expressed interest through its subsidiary P&O. Only in 2016, it transported 63mn TEUs with revenue greater than 4bn dollars.

ICTSI, based in Philippines is another “giant” with 8.7mn TEUs in 2016 and revenue of 1.1bn dollars, making it the 14th biggest player worldwide.

DIEP is a subsidiary of TCAG, a German fund based in Munich and operates, through several companies, within the “new economy” sector in the form of private equities or venture capitals. TCAG controls DIEP’s assets, worth more than 400mn euros (2016).

Beltera Ltd is an investment scheme of Savvidis family. Mr. Savvidis has followed an investment strategy in Northern Greece, concerning various sectors, among which hoteling and sports.

Terminal Link SAS belongs to CMA CGM. Terminal Link manages 14 container terminals in the Far East, Northern Europe, the Mediterranean, Western Africa and North America. Through those terminals, it is estimated that it transported more than 14mn TEUs in 2014 while CMA CGM transported through Terminal Link and CMA Terminals more than 11.5 TEUs with a combined capacity of 23.7mn TEUs.

It is noteworthy that CMA GSM is one of the biggest companies concerning containers trafficking (15.6mn TEUs in 2016) with a revenue of 16bn euros on a unified basis and a commercial fleet of 449 vessels (ranking 3^rd worldwide with an overall capacity of 2,153,651 TEUs and 10.4% market share).

Nikos Karagiannis-ypodomes.com

Follow Nikos Karagiannis on Twitter