The supply chain is facing additional problems in the aftermath of storm ‘Daniel’ in Thessaly, as road and rail transports are not carried out due to problems in the national road and rail network which have flooded.
More specifically, the national highway Athens-Thessaloniki has been flooded by the waters of the ‘Pinios’ river in the area of Gyrtoni Tempi for eight days, while the railway network has also suffered great damage and it will take weeks to restore its operation.
The president of the National Logistics Council reported to “Naftemporiki”, that Pearl (a subsidiary of Cosco) in order to bypass the Athens-Thessaloniki railway route directs goods by ship from Piraeus to the port of Rijeka in Croatia, having launched more trains to facilitate transports. They had also adopted this solution in December 2015, when the rail connection was suspended due to the multi-day blockade of Idomeni by migrants.
At the same time, as noted, the damage to the infrastructure of the Athens-Thessaloniki railway axis is delaying the country’s effort to strengthen the role of the railway in freight transport and attract global logistics chains.
It should be noted that this year the Greek supply chain ranked 23rd from 42nd in 2018 (the previous year of the survey), based on six criteria.
Among these criteria are the level of infrastructure, customs clearance procedures, the quality of services proed, the ability to control and record goods, the existence of competitive prices and the time of delivery – receipt of goods. The latter is a decisive factor, as the average time for a container to be transported from the port of entry to its destination, through all existing international routes, reaches 44 days.
