Cyprus shipping heavyweights bestowed the country’s most prestigious maritime award for the first time to a Greek, as part of efforts to reverse the fortunes of its ship registry.
George Procopiou, a major owner of most types types of vessels, received the Cyprus Maritime 2023’s personality award in Limassol during the opening ceremony of the biennial conference Maritime Cyprus late on Sunday.
The award reflected the Greek owner’s “long and significant contribution to the development of Cyprus shipping — particularly in terms of his contribution to the fleet of Cyprus-flag vessels”, award committee chairwoman Natasa Pilides said.
The founder of Sea Traders, Dynacom and Dynagas was the first owner to register five state-of-the-art, ice-class LNG ships under the Cyprus flag — a group of vessels Pilides called “the pride and joy of the Cyprus registry”.
The Cypriot flag lacks many reasons to be cheerful.
The war in Ukraine and European Union sanctions against Russia that went with it led to something of an exodus from the Cypriot ship registry.
Between 15% and 20% of the tankers flying the country’s flag decamped from its registry as a result of sanctions.
According to Clarksons’ World Fleet Register for September, Cyprus occupied rank 14 among the world’s biggest flag states — down from 12th place in February 2022, when the Ukraine war commenced.
During that period, the Cypriot-flag fleet dropped from about 1,030 vessels, with a capacity of about 22.5m gt, to 978 ships on 19.7m gt.
In that shrinking fleet, players such as Procopiou, who keep faith with the island, are gaining in importance and relative weight.
According to Pilides, Procopiou’s ships alone account for 3.5% of the Cypriot-registered fleet in terms of tonnage.
The ships Procopiou has registered in Cyprus have an average age of just five years, compared with an average age of 17 years for the entire Cypriot-flag fleet, according to Clarksons.
The largest backer of Cyprus’ fleet is native Polys Hajioannou, who has more than 50 vessels under the country’s flag.
Communicating vessels
Procopiou’s award is characteristic of another trend as well — that of increasing osmosis between the Greek and Cypriot shipping establishments.
Several companies that were originally active in just one of the two countries now have offices in both.
Such cross-fertilising became especially marked in 2016, when several Greek companies set up secondary offices in Cyprus as a backup in case Greece crashed out of Europe’s single currency.
In the other direction, owners originally from Cyprus feel equally comfortable in Athens, where they are conducting a large part of their business.
Greek and Cypriot shipowners held a joint jamboree in Αthens last month to celebrate their good relations.
Perhaps the most telling signal of these ever closer ties came on 11 September, when Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis named a born Cypriot, Christos Stylianidis, his new shipping minister.
Stylianidis, 65, who attended Procopiou’s award ceremony in Limassol on Sunday, is a former member of the European Commission for humanitarian crises.
Stylianidis served to May 2023 in the Greek cabinet as minister in charge of climate change and civil protection matters.
