Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras (1st R), Chinese Ambassador to Greece Du Qiwen (2nd L) and Piraeus Container Terminal (PCT) General Manager Fu Chengqiu (3rd L) attend the PCT inauguration ceremony in Athens, Greece, on Feb. 28, 2013. Greece inaugurated on Thursday the key connection of the Greek railway network to Piraeus port in a bid to turn the country's biggest port into a major transit hub for the Mediterranean Sea and Eastern Europe. (Xinhua)

Hewlett-Packard (HP) signed a deal with China Ocean Shipping (Group) Company (COSCO) on Friday, agreeing that the former will use the latter's cargo terminal in the Greek port of Piraeus as a transit center.

The signing ceremony was also attended by Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras and four government ministers.

HP, a leading U.S. information technology firm, will distribute its products in Southern and Eastern Europe, Mediterranean and Central Asian countries through the facilities of COSCO, one of the world's biggest container terminal operators.

The agreement was signed one day after the completion of a 17-km rail line linking the port of Piraeus with Greece's inter-European railway networks and connecting the container terminal in Piraeus to the Thriassio Plain, Greece's main logistics hub.

HP will transport its products by sea from Northeastern Asia to the COSCO terminal at Piraeus and from there by rail to Central and Eastern Europe using Trainose trains.

The process of transporting HP's products from Asia to Europe had become costly and time-consuming and Friday's agreement will enable the U.S. company to distribute its products to Central and Eastern Europe seven days faster than the route followed up to now through ports in Northern Europe.

The merchandise will be shipped to Piraeus, to be loaded on Trainose train wagons, which will then convey the shipment through the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM), Serbia, Hungary and Austria to the Czech Republic.

"Piraeus is today a vehicle of strong development for Greece," Samaras said in his speech at the ceremony, noting that Piraeus is becoming "a very important hub of the trans-European transport network."

"We hail the signing of the agreement between two private companies of global range, COSCO and Hewlett-Packard, which use this infrastructure and operate successfully within this new framework of trust and stability that we create today in our country," Samaras said.

The agreement initially provides for the transport of 20,000 HP containers annually, Tony Prophet, HP's senior vice president for operations, told media after the ceremony.