The Last Word: “When you’re already big, you have a far better chance of getting BIGGER”

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Peter Ford, CEO of the Port of Salalah, Oman, talks to PTI about defying the economic downturn

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“The Port of Salalah is a little bit different from other ports because we’re a public-private partnership, and we’re kind of the Port Authority as well. We operate the whole port – we operate the tugs, the general cargo, there’s also some real estate. APM Terminals has the management contract to operate the entire facility, so APMT is 30 percent shareholder and the manager at the same time.

“Oman has 3 million people, so it’s not a huge market. Salalah is 1000km away from the major consumer market of Muscat, so we don’t really service Muscat, at least not directly. Ninety-eight percent of all container volume is transshipment, then on the general cargo side all import-exports are local.

“We’re not really servicing a market other than Salalah on the container side or on the general cargo side. There is a desire – and actually we’ve started some recent tests – to observe the northern Yemeni market. There’s about 8 million people who live 50km away from Salalah in Yemen, and with a decent road, we could come to an agreement with the Al-Mazunah Free Zone on the border and the Omani Customs to get bonded cargo from the Port to the Al-Mazunah Free Zone, and then into Yemen. And so we feel that that market could develop a significant amount of desire to come to Salalah for serving the Yemeni market…

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