As well as continued organic growth, SOHAR will be focusing on two main areas moving forward: food and logistics. Mark Geilenkirchen explains:“ The port was originally based around three industrial clusters: logistics, metals and petrochemicals. We recently added food as our fourth pillar with the launch of SOHAR Food Zone, the region’ s first dedicated agro terminal.” Earlier this month, Sohar Flour Mills announced that they are moving ahead with construction of a new 500 tons a day milling facility in the Food Zone. The new mill is a joint venture between the UAE’ s Essa Al Ghurair Investments and Aytab Investments of Oman and is due for completion by the end of 2017. Built on the site of the old container terminal B at SOHAR, the new Food Zone also includes firm plans for a sugar mill and the infrastructure for downstream food processing, packaging and logistics industries.
This new expansion phase at SOHAR is expected to generate a further US $ 8 billion worth of investment over the next five years.“ There are certainly some external factors that are currently influencing growth: the general level of global economic uncertainty and historically low oil prices that are affecting all the GCC economies. However, those same low oil prices are acting as a catalyst to spur on economic diversification across the region,” says Mark Geilenkirchen.“ The whole Middle East is moving from an economic base powered by oil and gas exports to one that is fuelled by knowledge, and this diversification is driving investment with an upside for our business in SOHAR,” he says.
“ Moving forward, we will be looking to create more synergies between our Port and Freezone and especially developing the Freezone as a hub for innovation,” says Geilenkirchen. This will include a scheme that aims to create better use of resources between the Port and Freezone’ s existing tenants and those looking to setup business.“ For example, where one company produces steam as a waste product, another may actually need steam for its own industrial processes. By improving the level of connectedness between our tenants’ businesses we can help them grow more efficiently with more synergies, and a very positive environmental upside for all of us.”
Ports don’ t look very smart seen from outside the fence, but over the past ten years there has been a revolution in the way that they work. Behind the scenes, there has been huge investment and innovation. Dutch-born, but with broad global business experience, the new SOHAR CEO knows that the focus of port operators is changing across the globe. Instead of being really good at doing just one particular thing, today it’ s more important that they become really good at learning how to do new things- and doing that faster and better than ever before.“ Right now, that’ s our focus at SOHAR, and ensuring that we have the management structures in place to deliver against that,” explains Geilenkirchen.
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