Lockdown taking toll on companies dependent on materials brought in from abroad – from bottles for wine to paper for toilet rollThe picturesque region of vineyards beyond Thessaloniki is famous for its wines and spirits that are in high demand across the world, regardless of Greece’s economic crisis. “But in order to sell wine abroad, we need bottles to put the wine in,” sighed a despairing Emmanuil Vlachogiannis, vice-president of Thessaloniki’s chamber of commerce.“We don’t make bottles in Greece, we import them. But with capital controls and a freeze on the banking system, imports are practically non-existent, so the bottles aren’t coming in. No one can export wine without bottles. We’re experiencing a devastation of the economy. For one week nothing has moved, there are no transactions.” Continue reading...
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