lit a candle 10h agoMy dad called me about this, he's been in dry bulk shipping for twenty years and he always brought her up as someone who actually built something from nothing. Two secondhand Handysize carriers in 92 isn't a small thing to start with. That stuck with me even living out here.
Their story
Evgenia Daskalopoulou was a Greek shipowner who founded Almi Marine Management in 1992 and led it as chairwoman for more than three decades, building a dry bulk company from two elderly Handysize bulk carriers into a modern fleet of Supramax and Ultramax ships. Her death, at the age of 68,…
Evgenia Daskalopoulou was a Greek shipowner who founded Almi Marine Management in 1992 and led it as chairwoman for more than three decades, building a dry bulk company from two elderly Handysize bulk carriers into a modern fleet of Supramax and Ultramax ships. Her death, at the age of 68, was announced by Almi Marine on 7 October 2026.
She was born in 1958, the daughter of Aristeidis Daskalopoulos and the sister of the businessman Dimitris Daskalopoulos. The family's name was tied to Greek dairy. Its business began around 1890 as a small yoghurt and milk workshop on Zoodochou Pigis Street in Exarchia, in central Athens. Her father, who had worked in the shop from the age of 12, took it over in 1955, moved it to larger premises on Didotou Street and went on to build it into Delta, which by 1979 led the Greek market for pasteurised milk. Her brother took charge of the dairy group in 1984.
Daskalopoulou chose a different industry. Almi Marine Management S.A., which she founded in 1992, started with two Handysize bulk carriers built in 1970. Over the following years it became a shipowning and management company focused on modern Supramax and Ultramax dry bulk carriers. By 2024 it managed seven ships with a combined capacity of 424,012 deadweight tonnes, among them the Altus, Anasa, Anima, Kibali, Mea Mare, Sole and the newly built 64,000 dwt Spike, delivered by the Dalian Cosco KHI shipyard in China.
The company kept growing in her final year. In February 2026 Almi Marine signed for two 64,000 dwt Ultramax bulk carriers at the NACKS shipyard for delivery in 2029, and in early October 2026, days before her death, it announced three more at Cosco Zhoushan for delivery in 2030. According to the company, she shaped Almi Marine's character and culture, treating integrity in business dealings and respect for every employee, in the office and at sea, as principles that were not up for negotiation. She believed that the company's real strength was its people.
She was married to Giannis Sarras, and they had two children, Ilias and Aristi, both of whom worked in the family company. TheSeaNation reported that she had been fighting cancer in recent months. Greek maritime publications including Naftika Chronika, Mononews and TheSeaNation carried the news, and she was remembered as the third generation of a family of Athens entrepreneurs who took its tradition of enterprise from the dairy shop to the open sea.
Biography adapted from News reports: Naftika Chronika, Mononews, TheSeaNation, Naftemporiki and TradeWinds.
Photos
1by People Forever
Handysize start is wild, most people inherit fleets, she built hers