MUSCAT: Oman’s Sohar port raised its capacity with $130 million (Dh477.4 million) transformations last year.
Oman is spending billions of dollars in diversifying its economy away from hydrocarbons. If all goes to plan, Oman will transform into a major industrial and logistics centre with much of the country’s imports and exports passing through Sohar.
The port, benefiting from Muscat Port, about 230km south, closing itself to container vessels last year, saw a 58 per cent rise in TEUs to 330,663 in 2014, according to its website.
“We’re still small,” Andre Toet, Sohar Port chief executive, said in an interview.
The size of the port will soon rise again. In 2017, construction will begin on increasing capacity to 4 million TEU a reported cost of 60 to 70 million Omani riyals ($155-180 million). Toet declined to confirm the investment figure but said construction would be complete by mid-2018.
Sohar Port also has a 4,500 hectare freezone, which opened in 2010. The freezone has been “fast expanding,” Toet said, with the first 500 hectare block “almost full.”
He said that designing of the second block is underway in hope of starting construction “early next year.” “I’m quite optimistic about 2015,” Toet added.
So far, the port and free zone have focused on three business pillars; upstream steel metals, upstream hydrocarbons and logistics. It’s now adding a fourth, the food sector. The construction of the sugar refinery is slated to start in the second quarter, Toet said.
Sohar Port is located on the fringes of a regional market flooded with container ports. Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Qatar and Kuwait are all heavily investing to expand their ports. Dubai’s Jebel Ali, which is just 200km from Sohar, is adding 4 million TEUs to increase its capacity to 19 million TEUs this year.
