AMMAN, May 31 (Reuters) – Jordan’s only container port on the Red Sea is picking up traffic to Syria, Israel and the West Bank, as rising sea freight costs give it an advantage over closer but strongly congested, its CEO said on Tuesday. .

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Given the current backlog of shipments and sea freight rates, Syrian and Palestinian importers are finding it cheaper to move their cargo through the port of Aqaba than through the Syrian ports of Latakia and Haifa in Israel, Soren Jensen, managing director of Aqaba Container Terminal (ACT), told Reuters. in an interview

“Some of our regional competitors … are seeing the impact of high ocean freight demand and door wait times for customers,” he said. “We don’t live that.”

Total throughput at ACT, part of AP Moller-Maersk, is expected to increase 5-8% this year from 765,662 20-foot equivalent units (TEUs) last year, which was down from to 802,420 TEUs before the pandemic in 2019, Jensen said. The port has a handling capacity of 1.3 million TEUs.

ACT has invested more than $320 million over the past decade and improved truck queues and ship port stays, with cargo delivery reduced to one week, Jensen said.

Representatives from the ports of Latakia and Haifa did not immediately respond to a request for comment on cargo delivery times.

“We were able to attract a lot more goods to Syria, the West Bank and Israel. It basically means that our volumes in transit have increased significantly,” Jensen said, referring to goods being shipped to Jordan for transfer elsewhere by road.

More and more Syrians are also using Aqaba to avoid strict control and delays encountered when importing directly on shipping lines to Syria, which is under Western sanctions, two businessmen and a leading shipper.

The port is also hoping for a revival of business to Iraq, for which it was previously the main gateway, and which for decades received at least a third of the port’s freight.

Jordanian customs controls on traffic bound for Iraq have hampered the return of Aqaba port transit activities. Jordan reopened its main border crossing point with Iraq in 2017 after years of closure following the takeover of the main highway to Baghdad by militants.

The geographical location of the Red Sea port makes importing goods through Aqaba to northwest Iraq more feasible than trucking goods from Iraq’s Umm Qasr port, he added.

“For northwest Iraq, if you unload in Umm Qasr, you have to truck it longer than if you unload in Aqaba. The main transformation measure would be to reopen the gateway to Iraq “, Jensen said.

Reporting by Suleiman Al-Khalidi; Editing by Jan Harvey

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