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Eleusis Shipyards

In 1962, the shipowner Andreadis established the Eleusis shipyards. The construction of the Eleusis Shipyards was in Eleusinia, a wonderful, quiet beach just 12 minutes west of Eleusis on the way to Megara. Known also as the Andreadis Shipyards, this construction made many Eleusinians rich (if they owned the rich olive fields on which the shipyards were built), but changed entirely the demographics and environment of the city. Greece's second major shipbuilding firm, the Eleusis Shipyards (located on the Gulf of Saronikos near Athens), had a wide range of activities, including shipbuilding, ship repairs and conversions, and industrial construction. In late 1994, the major military contract at Eleusis was for five large LST landing craft for the Hellenic Navy.

The Mitsotakis government seemed to have been moving in the right direction with the sale of Eleusis Shipyards to the Peraticos group in 1992. The Periticos Group, a London-based shipping company acquired Eleusis Shipyards from the Commercial Bank of Hellas, a state- owned bank. The prospects for a new privatisation initiatives improved significantly since 1996 in view of an apparent shift in popular opinion favoring privatisations, in part due to the positive results from reforms. An often cited example in Greece is the very good economic performance of the Neorion Shipyards which had doubled employment and become an economic mainstay on the island of Syros since their privatisation in 1994. They had participated in the purchase of the Eleusis Shipyards in 1997.

However, New Democracy failed miserably when it came to Hellenic and Neorion repair yard, Greece's largest and third largest facilities, respectively. In both cases, the government and the Hellenic Industrial Development Bank - the latter being the nominal owner of the two shipyards - failed at the last moment to close the deal with the prospective buyers, mainly due to opposition from yard workers.

In 2001, Elefsis Shipyards concluded the construction of 3 LTD's, Jason class, for the Hellenic Navy. In 2003 Elefsis delivered the largest ship of the Hellenic Navy, Promitheus. Under construction were a series of five FAC (Fast Attack Craft) of Vosper Thornycroft design. These 62 meter ships carry the latest generation Exocet missiles and are considered the most modern front line units of the H.N.

In April 2008, DCNS forged cooperation with the Eleusis Shipyards which provided for the construction of six frigates to Greece, while substantially DCNS would supply the functionality of the propulsion systems and weapons. The Greek government had intended for all six ships to be built in Greece with French technical assistance. The only shipyard in Greece which was capable of building frigate-size warships was Hellenic Shipyards in Skaramanga, which was 100% owned by the German TKMS concern. For Hellenic Shipyards to become responsible for the Greek FREMM construction, France's DCNS would have to transfer all their designs, building technologies, and costing procedures and so on to their bitter rival TKMS - an unlikely proposition. The way around this conundrum was for the Greek Government to appoint Eleuysis Shipyards as the main contractor for the FREMM program, even though Eleuysis could not build ships larger than a corvette, and would need to be expanded significantly.

On 15 January 2009, Minister of National Defence, Mr. Evangelos Venizelos and Alternate Defence Minister Panos Beglitis met with the Ambassador of the French Republic, Mr. Christophe Farnaud, accompanied by the President and CEO of the French state-owned shipbuilding DCNS Mr. Patrick Boissier and the President of of Eleusis Shipyards Mr.Nikolaos Tavoularis. The purpose of the meeting was the assessment of development for the Greek-French intergovernmental cooperationon the FREMM frigates program. Early in 2010 a senior official of DCNS said that Greece was the strongest prospect for a sale estimated value of EUR 2.2 billion (US$2.9 billion),

In February 2010 the French shipbuilding group DCNS confirmed that the Greek order for 6 European Multi-Mission Frigates (FREMM) will not be realized. The debt problems of Greece had suffered ended its hopes to reach agreement to supply the Greek Navy frigate six FREMM.