{"id":4225,"date":"2015-11-03T10:09:00","date_gmt":"2015-11-03T10:09:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/portstrategy.nfdtesting.uk\/coastlink\/2015\/11\/03\/coming-from-nowhere\/"},"modified":"2026-08-27T15:38:28","modified_gmt":"2026-08-27T14:38:28","slug":"coming-from-nowhere","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/2015\/11\/03\/coming-from-nowhere\/","title":{"rendered":"Coming from nowhere"},"content":{"rendered":"

Don\u2019t confuse the Red Sea with the Middle East Gulf, Ammar Kanaan, chairman of National Container Terminals, King Abdullah Port tells Port Strategy<\/em>: \u201cIt\u2019s a very different market.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou have to count the number of port projects coming up in the Gulf in terms of acres,\u201d he says, but by contrast \u201cthe Red Sea, given that it\u2019s part of the world\u2019s largest trade route, isn\u2019t yet at capacity\u201d.<\/p>\n

According to Mr Kanaan, the area still yields opportunities for a port with 25-across cranes and 18m of draft.<\/p>\n

Although King Abdullah Port (KAP) is looking at handling cargo for Africa as well as the Red Sea region, he is clear about its place in the scheme of things: \u201cTranshipment is transhipment, it\u2019s not loyal and you don\u2019t, at the end of the day, make money out of it. It\u2019s simply not a reason to be building a port.\u201d<\/p>\n

So the development has looked carefully at gateway drivers: \u201cSaudi Arabia is the largest economy in the region, half its population is under 25 so there\u2019s a lot of growth coming up. But the transport and logistics industry is lagging somewhat behind others in the region despite its size.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a pretty obvious winner says Mr Kanaan: \u201cSome of the calculations can be done on the back of an envelope. Just go to one of Saudi Arabia\u2019s borders and count the number of trucks going in and out, and there\u2019s your evidence that the existing ports are not catering for 100% of the country\u2019s demand. And if you dig a bit deeper into the analysis, you find many of the goods coming in from America or Europe land in other countries\u2019 ports first.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, while Saudi ports have capacity challenges, some might legitimately ask if the reason that cargo is being rerouted via places like Dubai is more to do with the speed of customs clearance?<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople often like to take shots at the authorities for slowing things down, but in fact the time it takes to get a container out of King Abdullah Port is a fraction of other facilities”. Since this is a greenfield site we had the chance to work with the customs authorities to reinvent the entire process.\u201d Some of it came down to layout, he explains: \u201cWe realised we could take an extra loop out of the journey around the yard by scanning containers straight off the ships.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Fresh start<\/strong> <\/p>\n

Its setting has also provided a few challenges. The port is at the heart of the wonderfully inspired but still amorphous King Abdullah Economic City (KAEC) located 90km north of Jeddah, and like the metropolis slowly growing up around it, it\u2019s sprung from nowhere: \u201cWe\u2019ve had to work hard to compensate for being a greenfield site, away from established urban areas; at the end of the day the customers need to see that the boxes get to their warehouses in the same, or better, time, at the same or better costs.\u201d<\/p>\n

On the other hand this arena is integral to development, and potentially yields far more than city-bound Jeddah ever could: \u201cKing Abdullah Port has a backdrop of an industrial and logistics zone that extends to tens of millions of square metres. A megaport with plans for 20m teu needs those value-added services, otherwise its ability to serve the country as a gateway and the region as a hub becomes very limited. This is what differentiates us and provides the value add to the Saudi economy.\u201d<\/p>\n

So, how\u2019s KAP doing? It\u2019s been going since 2014, has four berths, is averaging 35 moves across its nine cranes (soon to be 14) and has reached 1.6m teu throughput. As for speed, Mr Kanaan offers up a better metric than dwell time \u201cas this isn\u2019t a particularly good indicator since customers can leave their boxes at the port if they don\u2019t mind paying for storage\u201d. Instead, \u201cwe measure how long it takes from the moment the customer triggers the clearance process to the moment the container gets out the gate\u201d. He adds: \u201cOver the past few months we\u2019ve been averaging 0.6 to 0.7 of a day, so just a few hours.\u201d<\/p>\n

There is one other small point that contrasts the surrounding regime with the difference the development could make: the port employs 120 young, local women from surrounding towns and villages who could not otherwise had similar work opportunities says Mr Kanaan: \u201cThey are enthusiastic… and they run our control centre.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Theres still room for greenfield sites in the Middle East, finds Stevie Knight<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":4226,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"sponsor":[],"class_list":["post-4225","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-container-cargo-handling"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4225","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4225"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4225\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4227,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4225\/revisions\/4227"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4226"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4225"},{"taxonomy":"sponsor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sponsor?post=4225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}