Piraeus coming into its own as a transportation hub.

Last year it was the turn of Chinese colossi Huawei and ZTE. This year will be the turn of Japanese and US multinationals from the electronic sector.

Reports in the press show that Japanese giant Sony Electronics, but also Dell (third largest PC manufacturer globally) and Cisco (one of the most significant players in telecom equipment) are now getting ready to “land” at Piraeus and use the port as a gateway to the European market. In fact Sony seems to have already undertaken test shipments towards its plants in central Europe.

The great benefit of transiting shipments through Piraeus towards central, eastern, and southern Europe is the decrease in needed time. When the agreement between COSCO – HP – TRAINOSE was announced in March 2013, officials at HP assessed that shipping time from China to Central Europe was reduced by seven days.

Other assessments speak of even a ten day savings, or about a third of the time needed to transport items from ports in SE Asia to Rotterdam, or Hamburg, the dominance of which is now being threatened by Piraeus. One company that tried to move freight overland from China to Moscow and only proved that moving them through Piraeus was quicker. The savings of companies using Piraeus are tremendous. Smaller transport time means savings not only in transportation costs but also on freight insurance, and besides time is money. For this reason a lot of manufacturers are now eying the COSCO route through Piraeus as an attractive alternative.

Besides Sony, Dell, and Cisco, other firms interested in utilizing Piraeus are Korean firms Samsung and LG Electronics, as well as Japanese firm Toshiba, while many more are believed to be interested. The new legislation on logistics will attract investments in the supply chain infrastructure and lead to price decreases for some goods of around 15%, opening up the way for further deals with TRAINOSE.

According to HP sources, the amount of materials transiting through Piraeus is steadily growing and when it becomes possible to supply their plant in the Czech republic exclusively by rail it will grow even more.

In the next weeks the first ZTE shipment is expected, while later this year it's Huawei's turn. Cosco is also collaborating with Procter & Gamble, the products of which are moved by train from Athens to northern Greece, and the agreement will be extended towards Europe. This deal could well overshadow TRAINOSE's deal with Hewlett Packard.