The largest vessel to ever arrive at the port of Piraeus, the “Taurus”, docked at Greece’s main port on Monday.
The brand new 420-meter container carrier “China Cosco Taurus” docked at pier III, inaugurating a regular route from China to Rotterdam.
The 20,000 TEU container vessel, along with its sister ship, the “China Cosco Aries”,  is considered a “Giga carrier”.
According to an announcement on Monday by Piraeus’ Commercial and Industrial Chamber of Commerce, the port of Piraeus will soon be the only facility in the Mediterranean able to handle five such vessels at the same time.
According to the chamber, more than 4.15 million containers (exceeding 20 feet) passed through the port of Piraeus in 2017, up from 3.75 million in 2016.

“The arrival of the Giga container Taurus is part of Cosco’s ongoing modernisation, which resulted in higher customer trust”, said Chinese Embassy attache in Athens, Jao Wenqi, adding that “Greek-Chinese relations of trust, cooperation, and understanding resulted in Cosco investing in the port of Piraeus.”
On his part, Maritime Affairs Minister Panagiotis Kouroumblis said that “the only way to exit (crisis) and growth is mutual co-operation and understanding between the two sides.” Commenting on the launching of Pier III, he said that “the whole effort had difficulties and problems” but that “once the works in Piraeus were completed it will be one of the largest ports in the world”.