THE two-berth Greek terminal at Piraeus Port, for which Cosco Pacific paid US$5 billion for a 30-year concession in 2009, has outperformed the company's foreign container units in August with a traffic surge of 53 per cent from a year ago.

The Chinese group's Greek unit handled 165,000 TEU in August and 1.39 million TEU since January, representing a 98.4 per cent growth compared to the first eight months of last year.

 Piraeus, until recently Europe's most strike-bound port, was significantly ahead of Cosco's second-ranked Tianjin International Container Terminal, which boosted August traffic 34.7 per cent to 110,800 TEU.

 Traffic at the Antwerp Gateway terminal, in which Cosco has a 20 per cent stake, declined 20.6 per cent in August to 82,400 TEU. The Suez Canal Container Terminal, also 20 per cent owned by Cosco, was down 11.8 per cent at 245,400 TEU. The Cosco-PSA terminal in Singapore boosted traffic by 4.9 per cent in August to 100,900 TEU.

 Cosco Pacific's total throughput climbed 8.4 per cent in August to 4.89 million TEU and reached 36.5 million TEU for the first eight months of the year, a 10 per cent increase on the same period in 2011.

(Source:shipping online)