The amounts involved in the vocational training sector in recent years in Greece have been impressive. Training programs funded by European resources have brought companies into the spotlight with profits exceeding €27 million. The revelations from Big Mouth of powergame.gr represent only the visible part of a massive economic phenomenon reshaping the professional education market.
The new market leaders in training
Two brothers, Charalampos and Dionysis Zafiropoulos, stand at the top of the Greek training market. The first runs the company “Apopsi” based in Piraeus, which has emerged as the largest Greek enterprise in the sector. In 2024, the company recorded a turnover of €27 million, although this amount is reduced compared to 2023 when it reached €47 million.
The financial results of “Apopsi” are impressive. During the two-year period 2023-2024, the company presented net profits after taxes of €27 million, a performance that much larger enterprises would envy. A characteristic of this success is the fact that the company returned almost €20 million to its shareholders in the form of dividends. The growth is explosive when one considers that in 2018 revenues amounted to €2.1 million and net profits to just €40,000.
Dionysis Zafiropoulos controls the company “Saronis ATEVE” based in Salamina, which operates as a Lifelong Learning Center. The business is among the four largest in the country and in the last two years presented a turnover of €16 million with net profits of €3.4 million.
Master and Universal in the market battle
In second place in the market, “Master AE” is established, a company with many years of presence that has been developing dynamically in recent years. The enterprise based in Argyroupoli showed an increase in size in 2024, while most of its competitors declined. Revenues reached €11 million compared to €10 million in 2023.
Master’s net profits reached €3.7 million in 2024, significantly higher than the €2.8 million in 2023. The company distributed €2 million from 2023 profits to its shareholders.
The first quartet is completed by Universal Educational, the former AKMI of Konstantinos Rodopoulos. In 2024, the company recorded revenues of €5.9 million compared to €11.3 million in 2023. Profits decreased from €1.7 million to €0.8 million. Despite the reduction, the financial figures remain impressive compared to 2018, when AKMI KEK had a turnover of €272,000 and net profits of €26,000. The dividends of the two-year period exceed €1.7 million.
The role of NSRF and Recovery Fund
The companies’ financial data reveal that the market stabilized in 2024 after rapid development during 2020-2023. This course is exclusively due to state training actions for unemployed and employed people through Recovery Fund and NSRF programs. Initial absorptions were very fast, but subsequently available amounts were exhausted, although new contracts are on the horizon such as the Just Development Transition.
The catalyst for the development of training programs is undoubtedly the major financial instruments of the European Commission. The Recovery Fund and NSRF, both from the previous period 2014-2020 and the current 2021-2027, have channeled over €300 million into training and staff education in the last five to six years.
Major public contracts
From 2019 to today, according to the Central Electronic Registry of Public Contracts, over 36 contracts worth more than €1 million each have been signed. The largest concerns the Integrated Intervention for Young People aged 18-29 implemented by the Technical Chamber of Greece and amounted to €11.47 million.
The contract’s objective was the professional training of 4,160 unemployed people aged 18-29 in digital professions, energy and technical professions. The smallest contract concerned Integrated interventions for workforce empowerment for Just Development Transition worth €2.3 million. The project concerned the Megalopolis section and was implemented by the GSEE Labor Institute.
The nine companies that dominate
The total projects over €1 million were assigned to two dozen enterprises. However, nine of them took the lion’s share in training programs:
APOPSI AE undertakes or participates in projects totaling €135.2 million. SARONIS ABETE follows with projects worth €110.5 million and UNIVERSAL EDUCATION AE with €104.3 million. I.DE.A EPE participates in projects worth €84.1 million, while TECHNOPOLIS EDUCATIONAL AE in projects worth €74.9 million. PROTAGORAS AE based in Kavala undertakes projects worth €67.4 million, MASTER AE projects worth €61.3 million, PAPAVASILIOU ATH. & SIA EE projects worth €39.2 million and the TRANS-BALKAN Center for Business Development AE projects worth €31.6 million.
It’s noteworthy that until recently, several companies participating in projects worth tens of millions of euros were either Limited or General Partnerships. Some didn’t even announce annual results. For projects totaling €223 million, the total discount achieved was only €1.5 million, a rate of 1.1%.
Non-existent competition in tenders
Except for one contract where three bidders participated, in all other 35 contracts worth over €1 million, there was only one bidder. The projects were shared among interested parties who participated as company consortiums. This phenomenon is observed in all contracting authorities promoting such projects, including INE GSEE, ESEE, KEEE, TEE, INSETE and SVE.
Training sector companies share the work, exactly as happened in technology projects and other Recovery Fund and NSRF sectors. Competition is non-existent and rarely do discounts on offered prices exceed 2%. In seven INE GSEE tenders, the average discount achieved was 0.5%.
There was a tender where the submitted offer had no discount whatsoever. This concerns Integrated Interventions for enhancing knowledge and skills of unemployed graduates up to 29 years old in dynamic sectors of the economic development model with the Geotechnical Chamber of Greece as contracting authority. The project involved providing education and certification services to 1,840 young unemployed graduates from geotechnical schools. It had a budget of €5,975,400 and the only offer from the “Saronis” and “Technopolis” consortium included exactly the same amount.
Published in Parapolitika
