RIYADH — The Jeddah Islamic Port, the largest port in Saudi Arabia, reported a growth of 6.8% in 2020, with volumes increasing to 4.7 million TEU’s (twenty-foot equivalent unit) from 4.3 million TEU’s in 2019.

This increase in volume moved Jeddah Islamic Port to the rank of 37 out of 100 top global ports, moving up from 42nd place compared to last year, according to the Lloyd’s List 2021 of Top 100 ports.

The 2021 edition of Lloyd’s List of top 100 Ports was recently published, measuring the annual container throughput volumes of global ports in 2020. It includes three Saudi ports; King Abdullah Port ranking 84 and King Abdulaziz Port at 93 and Jeddah Islamic Port at 37.

According to the same report, Saudi Arabia has also made progress to be in the rank 16 in total volume handling from the global countries.

This improvement comes as a direct result of the largest build-operate-transfer (BOT) container terminal agreement at Jeddah port, with agreed investments of SR 9 billion for a period of 30 years.

As these new BOT will result in enhancing the container terminals capacity beyond 70%, reaching over 13 million TEU’s.

At the same time, the Saudi Ports Authority “MAWANI” continues to engage strategically and partner with major global shipping lines to enhance the development of logistics services in Saudi Ports in line with the Kingdom's Vision 2030. — SPA