23 August 2017
The new port at King Abdullah Economic City on Saudi Arabia's Red Sea coast handled 821,694 twenty-foot equivalent (TEU) container units during the first half of 2017, a year-on-year increase of about 14 percent, it was announced on Wednesday.

The King Abdullah Port also increased the number of vessels it handled during the period to 398, up by 14 percent from the 349 in the same period last year.

The value of imports also increased by 60.7 percent to 1.27 billion Saudi riyals ($340.4 million), according to figures from the kingdom's General Authority for Statistics.

King Abdullah Port opened in late 2013. The port is the first privately-operated facility of its kind in the kingdom and serves both as a Red Sea transit point and a gateway to King Abdullah Economic City's 63 million square metre Industrial Valley, which comprises about one-third of the city's land mass.

Abdullah M. Hameedadin, managing director of the Ports Development Company, which owns and runs King Abdullah Port, said: “These numbers clearly indicate the success of King Abdullah Port as the latest infrastructure megaproject in the Middle East.”

“We are cooperating with all relevant entities to support the port’s progress and finalise all its facilities. For example, we recently announced the completion of building and equipping the central operating room for monitoring and linking together the x-ray customs inspection systems in the port," he said.

The x-ray inspection and a wireless network allows its central operations centre to run 24 hour container inspections.

© Zawya 2017