As a blue container is lifted ashore, Khalifa Port marks its million milestone

Khalifa Port container terminal. Ravindranath K / The National

With a cargo including, polyethylene and aluminium ingots, it was pretty much like any other one of the thousands of 20-foot-long metal boxes passing through Abu Dhabi’s recently opened Khalifa Port.

But the slightly dusty blue corrugated iron container which swung ashore from the Valerie Schulte, a 28,927-tonne Liberian container ship was a little special.

As the heavy container was slowly and mechanically lifted by vast yellow and blue cranes, a small crowd of workers and dignitaries gathered to watch the spectacle of the port’s millionth container coming slowly to shore.

The occasion took place less than 12 months since port operations in Abu Dhabi were officially switched from Mina Zayed on the Corniche to the new US$7.2 billion terminal.

It marks yet another milestone in the capital’s plans to increase volumes at Khalifa Port by 2030 to handle 15 million similar containers a year – roughly the equivalent of the current capacity of Dubai’s Jebel Ali – as it attempts to diversify the emirate’s economy away from hydrocarbons revenues.

By that year, together with the adjacent Kizad industrial zone, the facility is expected to be two-thirds the size of Singapore and contribute 15 per cent of non-oil GDP.

The port developer Abu Dhabi Ports Company (ADPC) and operator Abu Dhabi Terminals (ADT) were quick to put the record into perspective, pointing out that a million twenty-foot equivalent units (or TEUs) is the equivalent of more than 6 million camels or 18,500 medium-sized dhows.

“One million containers is an important record for Abu Dhabi, not just Khalifa Port,” said Mohamed Al Shamisi, ADPC’s acting chief executive. “It’s a great achievement, demonstrating that the container terminal operations are efficiently and effectively handling the growing import and export volumes that the port was designed for.”

The company also said that more than 100,000 TEUs passed through the port during October, marking the highest number of containers ever handled in a single month in the emirate.

Although Khalifa Port has the capacity to handle 2.5 million TEUs a year using six Super-Post Panamax ship-to-shore cranes, 30 automated stacking cranes and 20 straddle carriers, this capacity will be developed in tandem with trade increases and market demands, according to the company.

Earlier this year, DP World reported that the Jebel Ali port, which was completed in 1979, had handled 3.6 million TEUs in the quarter ending in September, while volumes for the first nine months of the year exceeded 10 million TEUs for the first time.

Last year, the UAE was estimated to account for 50 per cent of GCC imports, and 33 per cent of GCC exports.