Red Sea Gateway Terminal (RSGT), the new container terminal at Jeddah Islamic Port, was officially inaugurated yesterday. It is the first privately funded, build operate and transfer (BOT) port development in Saudi Arabia.

The terminal was opened by Dr Jabara bin Eid Suraiseri, Minister of Transport  and chairman of the Saudi Port Authority, and Engineer Abdulaziz Al Twaijri, CEO of the Saudi Port Authority.

The world-class terminal is spearheaded by the Saudi Industrial Services group SISCO,.

The fully automated terminal situated within Jeddah Islamic port and covering over 500,000 sq m.  It sports intelligent design and layout, cutting-edge technologies and value-added logistics capabilities; ensuring efficiency within the whole supply chain. It increases the terminal's capacity by 45 per cent.

“World trade is expanding and as a result, the container handling infrastructure in which we specialise will assume an increasingly larger role and importance in the global economy,” said RSGT chairman Sheikh Mohamed Ahmed Zainal Alireza. 

RSGT boasts a dedicated deep water navigation channel able to take vessels with a draft up to 16.5 m, can handle the next generation of Triple E Class of mega vessels of 18,000+ TEU (Twenty foot equivalent).

RSGT, which has been operational since December 22, 2009, has celebrated a number of remarkable achievements. They include the berthing of its first mega vessel, the 14,777 TEU CSCL Star in 2011; the highest productivity figures in the region and a handling volume of 1m TEU in 2011 which accounted for 25 per cent of JIP’s volume. - TradeArabia News Service