Saudi Gazette report

BAAS INTERNATIONAL GROUP (BIG), in its strategic partnership with Saudi Railways Organization (SRO) for Management, Operation & Maintenance of Riyadh Dry Port (RDP) and its affiliate Rail Container Terminal (RCT) in Dammam, has handled more than 200,000 TEU’s of import containers up until July 2017 and an excess of 335,000 TEU’s in 2016.

The dry port facility located in Riyadh, is the only logistics hub in the Kingdom to achieve an average growth of 9.75% every year in terms of import volumes since it was taken over by BIG in March 2012.

On May 28, BIG as Port Contractor for RDP achieved a unique record, when a total of 1,149 Containers (1,819 TEU’s) were offloaded from 9 wagon trains and again on Aug. 3 BIG delivered 1,159 Containers in a single day.

Commenting on the achievement, Bader Abdullah Al Suweidan; president & CEO of BIG, said: “This achievement is a result of several innovative steps like implementing NAVIS N4 2.3, commissioning new equipment’s and strategic planning in operational processes.”

Import container volumes rose by 19% in 2015 and BIG handled 362,797 TEU’s as compared to 305,847 in 2014. The terminal has 9 railway tracks for offloading full import containers and 4 rail tracks for loading empty containers.

Each train has 57 wagons with a capacity of 228 TEU’s. Riyadh Dry Port (RDP) has an excellent rail link with King Abdul Aziz Port-Dammam. RDP is equipped with 16 Straddle Carriers, 13 Reach Stackers, 66 Terminal Trucks and 12 Empty Handlers.

The Port has separate Reefer area with 400 Reefer plugs for storage and inspection of Reefer containers, 4 warehouses for inspection of containers, LCL area and 4 X-ray machines. The port operates 24X7 handling an average of 130 trains per month. A record of 1,085 containers was delivered in a single day and the dwell time of containers at RDP is only 10 days.

Another key part of BIG’s portfolio is the Dammam RCT division. The empty containers are received at RDP and back-loaded to Dammam (RCT) via trains. BIG’s RCT division receives these empties and delivers them to agent terminals. In 2016, a total of 193,000 containers were delivered to shipping agent terminals.

As port contractor, BIG is credited with implementing NAVIS N4 2.3 in March 2013 as its Terminal Operating System (TOS) and SAP-ERP as its back end. RDP is the only port in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to have integrated both NAVIS and SAP, both running seamlessly capably supporting its 24X7 operations.

BIG has the unique distinction of winning the NAVIS Inspire Awards twice, once in 2015 when they won “Award of Recognition” in Customer Impact Category and in 2017 they were awarded the “Certificate of Recognition”, for being nominated in the same category.

Baas International Group recently launched an APP on all IOS/Android phones primarily aimed at tracking container movements for all containers bound for Riyadh as their final destination.

In April 2016, Saudi Arabia launched Saudi Vision 2030 — a methodology and road map for economic and developmental action program towards steering the Kingdom to a vibrant society and thriving economy.

One of the key features in the program is to transform Saudi Arabia’s unique strategic location into a global hub connecting the three continents Asia, Europe and Africa. RDP is poised to play a very important role as it is the only dry port in KSA, which is well connected by rail link to the Eastern Province of Dammam and is in the best position to handle GCC rail traffic.

Many shipping lines and consignees in Central Province of the Kingdom prefer to transport their containers via rail as it is the most convenient, safest and economical means of transportation.

.Al Suweidan said, “Riyadh Dry Port will undergo a major transformation in the future as we plan to implement a smart solution program which aims at redesigning the yard for optimizing container movements, commissioning new equipment like RTG’s for maximum utilization of space, installation of Optical Character Recognition (OCR) and upgrading NAVIS TOS to the latest version of 3.4. This shows our commitment and dedication towards a holistic development of Riyadh Dry Port elevating it to a world class terminal.”