On 4 March 2025 the Interministerial Committee for Strategic Investments admitted three tourism projects to the strategic regime, worth €1.22 billion between them. The largest of the three, at €524 million, was the conversion of the NA.VI.PE. port at Platygiali, in the Gulf of Astakos, into a tourist port for mega yachts — a scheme its promoters call the Nautilus Project, drawn as 350 berths, 105 of them for vessels above 40 metres.

What the committee admitted

The decision was taken by the committee sitting under the Minister of Development, Takis Theodorikakos, with the Minister of Environment and Energy Theodoros Skylakakis, the Minister of Culture Lina Mendoni, the Minister of State Makis Voridis, and the Deputy Minister of National Economy and Finance Nikos Papathanasis. The investing company named in the decision is Astakos Terminal S.A., and the object is set out without ornament: the conversion of the Platygiali port into a tourist port for mega yachts, with commercial uses and the provision of high-specification tourism and leisure services, in the Astakos district of Aetolia-Acarnania. The scheme’s strategic environmental study puts some 700 permanent jobs against the construction period, and about 1,150 once the port is working.

The two projects admitted alongside it were both resorts — €474 million at Ermionida and €224 million on Megalonisos in the Petalioi, off Euboea. Only the third was a harbour, and it carried the largest number.

The port beneath it

What Astakos has is not a bay awaiting a breakwater. It is a working deep-water commercial port, built for containers and bulk, which has spent most of its life below the capacity it was given. The promoters describe it in their own material as a dormant deep-water container port, and the ambition is to make of it a marine village rather than a quay with a car park behind it. The site runs to 1,778 stremmas — some 178 hectares — of shore and hinterland.

That inheritance is the argument. A mega yacht above 40 metres does not want for anchorages in Greece; it wants for depth, quay length, fuel, power and a yard within reach, and it wants them in a place it can leave a vessel between seasons. Platygiali was engineered for ships considerably larger than yachts. The Nautilus scheme proposes to spend its €524 million on what a home port needs — water, sewerage, an upgraded energy supply, a five-star hotel, residences and a business quarter — rather than on dredging a coast that was never deep.

Why 105 is the number that matters

Of the 350 berths drawn, 105 are set aside for yachts over 40 metres. That proportion is the whole proposition, and the scheme rests its case on it: Greece is where the large fleet cruises and is not, on the whole, where it lies. A single harbour offering 105 places above 40 metres would change the arithmetic of the eastern Mediterranean season at a stroke, which is why the promoters put it forward as the largest mega-yacht marina drawn anywhere.

Geography argues for it as well. Platygiali sits on the Ionian side, in the lee of the inner islands, with three airports within easy reach — Aktio, Araxos and Ioannina — and Athens roughly 3 hours away by road. Measured in the way an owner measures, it lies some 950 nautical miles from Monaco, 450 from Malta, 300 from Montenegro and 1,050 from the Suez Canal. It is a plausible place to keep a yacht that works both ends of the Mediterranean.

The names on the drawing

Astakos Terminal sits under APE Investment Property, the vehicle through which Alpha Bank and Piraeus Bank hold the estate. The master developer is MYMAR Nautilus Investments Limited, a Cyprus company assembled from the yachting and infrastructure trades to carry the redevelopment of Platygiali Bay. Archirodon is named as project manager and EPC contractor. A1Yachts and BWA are named for mega-yacht management and facility services, Deloitte as financial adviser, and WATG for the masterplan.

The scheme was filed with Enterprise Greece in 2023. It took until 4 March 2025 for the strategic designation to follow, and the designation is a licensing status under Law 4864/2021, not a keel laid. Fast-track consent shortens the road; it does not walk it. What the March decision changed is that a project which had been discussed for years acquired a legal standing it did not have in February.

What it would change

For a client who keeps a vessel in Greek water, the Ionian has long been the courteous end of the country and the underprovided one. Corfu and Lefkas hold the fleet as far as they can, and beyond them the coast returns to anchorages. A home port at Astakos would give the inner Ionian a wintering address, a yard, and a reason for a large yacht to arrive in April rather than pass through in July — and it would put the Gulf of Astakos, which most owners have read only as a name on a chart, into the itinerary proper.

Whether it is built is the open question, and the honest answer in March 2025 was that nobody knew. The file has moved since: the strategic environmental study went to public consultation in 2026, and in July 2026 the municipal council of Xiromero returned a favourable opinion on it by a wide majority, with the environmental and spatial approvals still ahead of it. What is settled is the intent, the number, and the fact that on 4 March 2025 the Greek state put its licensing machinery behind them.

For those who would keep a vessel in the Ionian rather than pass along it, the introduction is ours to make.