Vassilis Konstantakopoulos, one of Greece's best-known shipowners and the man behind one of the country's biggest tourist resorts, Costa Navarino in the Peloponnese, has died at the age of 76.
Konstantakopoulos, also known as "Kapetan" (Captain) Vassilis, had been fighting cancer.
After spending two decades as a seaman and captain in merchant shipping, Konstantakopoulos established the Costamare Shipping Company in 1974.
Today it has a fleet of 46 Greek-flagged ships, making it the largest independent cargo fleet in the world, according to the Athens News Agency.
With the Chinese state shipping group COSCO as its biggest charter client, Costamare set the pace for Greek owners entering the "China trade", which is credited with making billionaires out of dozens of Athens-based operators in the mid-2000s.
Konstantakopoulos - known in Beijing as Captain Vassili - kept ahead of the pack, forming an early joint venture with Chinese interests and building a series of container vessels at Chinese yards considered high risk at the time by more conservative owners.
When China started looking towards commercial expansion in the Balkans, he facilitated a 4bn euro concession deal between COSCO and the Greek government to develop a container terminal at Piraeus port as a hub for regional trade.
After his two sons, Costis and Achilleas, took over the day-to-day running of Costamare's shipping and tourist operations respectively, he had plenty of time to build cultural bridges.
Costamare opened Greece's first golf resort - Costa Navarino - last year close to the family's ancestral village in the Peloponnese.
Konstantakopoulos and his family had spent more than 25 years buying land in the Peloponnese so the complex could be constructed. The cost of the whole project exceeded 1 billion euros.
"This unit was not built just so we could make money," he told Skai Radio in a recent interview. "It took 28 years to buy all this land. Whatever land I bought, I bought there, I don't own any other land. If I'd wanted to make money, I would have invested in other things.
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