Cosco reports container growth in Q1
Container traffic is continuing to grow at the section of Piraeus port operated by Cosco Pacific’s local subsidiary, as the parent company announced in Hong Kong that terminals II and III handled 9.6 percent more containers in the first quarter of the year on an annual basis, reaching a figure of 807,000.
In March the growth amounted to 3.2 percent year-on-year as the local Cosco subsidiary, Piraeus Container Terminal (PCT), handled 275,100 containers, against 266,500 in March 2015.
Company officials say that this year’s increase is attributed to the significant rise in containers destined for forwarding by rail to countries in Central and Eastern Europe. While this category had come to just under 2,500 containers in 2014, last year it reached up to 8,000 units and in the first quarter of this year it had come to 5,000 containers.
According to recent statements by Cosco officials, the company’s target for this year is 3.3 million containers, compared with 3.03 million in 2015 and 2.98 million in 2014.
The current capacity of terminals II and III stands at 4.3 million units per year, but with the addition of the new Western Terminal III, the PCT-managed installations will see their capacity expand to 6.2 million containers on an annual basis.
