The Tartous Container Terminal is intended to fulfil the role of a major container gateway to Syria but it also has strong claims to develop its role as a gateway port for Iraq cargo. Major destinations in Syria that fall in the port of Tartous’s natural hinterland include: Homs; Hama and Damascus and for the time being Aleppo, due to the fact that new highway construction from Lattakia, Syria’s other major port, continues to suffer delays.

While Lattakia is the port that has traditionally handled the larger volume of container cargo it is still today only able to handle this cargo over the quay by means of ships’ gear and as such there is good scope for a rethink on the part of certain user lines for a move to Tartous to achieve a higher standard of service at a competitive price.

Syria has long offered the facility of inland container depots (ICD) and now a new ICD is under development on the Syria/Iraq border designed to promote traffic development. Presently, a lot of stripping of containers with Iraq-bound cargo takes place in Tartous – owners are not keen to release their containers for movement into Iraq. The development of the ICD on the Syria/Iraq border at Al Bukamal, intended to be a rail linked facility from the Syrian side, is expected to extend the movement of containers carrying Iraq cargo transport up to this point where containers will be turned for movement back to Tartous.

The development of container transport by rail is firmly on the agenda. “Syria is quite ambitious in its container thinking,” explains Budha Majumdar, chief executive, TICT, “and the development of intermodal rail systems is on the drawing board including rail movement to the Al Bukamal. We are just one new element of an entire system upgrade.”

Quite an achievement in a relatively short space of time.