ADRIATIC TANKERS

ADRIATIC TANKERS “A GREEK MIRACLE”

The maritime company “Adriatic Tankers” of Cpt. Panagis Zissimatos, is one of the most characteristic examples of the Greek seamanship and at the same time, business insightfulness which has to be a guide for all the young Greeks, and not only, that desire to engage with shipping, a very promising sector for all young people especially today in these very difficult economic times that the new generation faces extremely hard financial and orientation problems.

Cpt. Panagis Zissimatos, founder of Adriatic Tankers, being still an adolescent, started his own sea adventure signing on as from the age of 14. After that, by engaging at the family vessels and the primal shipping companies of this family he gained the necessary knowledge also in the shipping management beyond the necessary sea experience that he had already obtained.

Thus in the forthcoming years, and by foreseeing with acuity the needs and the gaps of the global shipping market, founded at the middle 1980’s the maritime company “Adriatic Tankers” with an aim to gain the portion of the market that he deserved.

With the strong determination and sharpness, that were the distinctive characteristics of its founder, Adriatic Tankers, during the years, took advantage of the market cycles and managed to evolve form a small maritime company to one of the major Shipping companies globally. At the zenith of its expansion, the company had a fleet of more than 100 vessels with personnel on board and ashore over 1,500 employees. Having Piraeus as the centre of its business activities, Adriatic Tankers in the middle 1990’s and its largest expansion, had incorporated offices in all the major maritime centres, such as Rotterdam, London, Houston USA, but also in the far East and more particularly in Japan, Korea and Singapore.

Adriatic Tankers managed to succeed this vast and rapid development, by using and introducing innovations in the global shipping market such as the use of S/S chemical tankers which opened new roads and prospective in the carriage of liquid cargoes and which up until that time were not used in wide scale globally, but also in the introduction and adoption of the code of Safe Management of vessels which now consists one of the most significant parts of the International maritime codification and practice.

Adriatic Tankers was one of the substantial pillars of the Greek shipping in the global field during the decade 1985-1995 and at the same time constituted a school for hundreds of Greek and foreign seamen and administrative personnel who during the next years used this precious knowledge and experience who gained through the years they were part of Adriatic Tankers, to their new ventures and maritime business activities promoting thus even more the vision of the founder of Adriatic Tankers for development and consolidation of the Greek shipping and seamanship in global level, something that constituted and the heritage of Adriatic tankers to the Greek Shipping and Greek seamen.