The project is looking at connecting Oxagon’s port with northeastern Saudi Arabia and the broader region first by road transport and later by rail.
Saudi Arabia’s high-tech “Neom” mega-project plans to expand a tiny local port into a trade and manufacturing hub near the Suez Canal that officials say will compete with the biggest facilities in the Middle East.
The proposal is the latest eye-catching announcement by Neom, with progress on the ground so far limited to earthworks. About 12 per cent of global trade flows through the Suez Canal.
The port will anchor an industrial city that Neom announced last week called Oxagon, Vishal Wanchoo, Oxagon’s Chief Executive, said in an interview. An existing port near the Red Sea town of Dhiba will be transformed to handle a container capacity of 3.5 to 4 million ton equivalent units (TEUs) by 2030, he said.
The project could eventually serve Neom’s commercial tenants as well as the broader Gulf region, Jordan and Iraq, he said. Capacity might extend up to nine million TEUs depending on Oxagon’s growth, he added. Dubai’s Jebel Ali port, the region’s largest, has capacity of more than 19 million TEUs.
Announced in 2017, Neom is the crown jewel of Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s program to overhaul the economy of the world’s largest oil exporter. His plan to turn the remote region on the kingdom’s northwest coast into a robot-driven tech hub encapsulates the major elements of his so-called “Vision 2030” to diversify away from crude, loosen social restrictions and boost investment.
