Sharjah-based Gulftainer plans to triple the capacity of its Khor Fakkan commercial terminal in three years, with container traffic through the port having risen due to the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz.
Capacity at Khor Fakkan will rise from 3.5 million twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) to 5 million TEUs in the near term, Gulftainer said, with a long-term masterplan taking it past 10 million TEUs. A TEU is a standard unit of capacity measurement in the maritime and shipping industry, and is equivalent to the size of a standard shipping container.
Two inland logistics parks, Al Dhaid and Sajaa, will add a combined 2.3 million TEUs of capacity, and will be connected to the terminal by a 90km corridor that extends towards Dammam, Saudi Arabia.
Gulftainer is in the process of purchasing cranes and other construction equipment to begin the expansion, group chief executive Farid Belbouab said.
“The port was built ahead, obviously, of such a disruption. Today, global uncertainty has simply confirmed the wisdom of that long-term vision,” he added.
Mr Belbouab said the UAE was not only reacting to the crisis in the Strait of Hormuz, but helping to enable global trade.
The expansion follows a surge in traffic through Khor Fakkan as a result of Iran's blockade of the Strait of Hormuz earlier this year. The number of lorries entering the port rose from about 100 a day before the blockade to the current level of 8,500 a day, Mr Belbouab said.
Weekly container volumes have risen from 8,000 to 65,000, a figure Mr Belbouab described as a “growing target”. To manage the surge, days after the Iran war began, Gulftainer built a marshalling yard 8km from the port.
