Egypt Set on Upgrading Its Ports

Egypt wants to upgrade the country’s ports, especially the six ports situated on the Suez Canal in order to enable them to have the necessary capacity to handle increasing cargo volumes in the region.

At a recently held meeting, Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah Saeed Hussein Khalil el-Sisi presented the general plan of developing and enlarging ports of Sukhna and Adabeyia to Ahmed Darwish, head of the general authority of Suez canal economic region and Kamel Elwazeer, head of Engineering authority and Hesham Abu Sennah, head of Red Sea port authority.

Under the plan, the ports are to be improved so as to meet the expected increase in working volumes resulting from the completion of the project of developing Suez Canal region, which will include the establishment of several industrial regions for petroleum projects, mineral oils and chemical products.

This is in addition to centers providing logistic services to vessels and rehabilitating ports to receive giant liquefied natural gas carriers and re-pumping them into the national gas network, in order to provide for Egypt’s needs for gas.

The plan comes on the back of the recently launched development of the East Port Said.

Namely, the Suez Canal Authority (SCA) and the Suez Canal Container Terminal (SCCT), which is 55 percent owned by Maersk’s APM Terminals, entered into an agreement in November to jointly upgrade the East Port Said through a USD 60 million-worth channel project.

The side-channel is scheduled to be dredged over seven months and is expected to become operational by the end of 2016.

According to SCA, the upgraded port and a new side canal will allow ships to immediately cross the East Port Said instead of waiting for seven hours.

World Maritime News Staff