Hapag-Lloyd, Eurogate and Contship Italia have formed a new joint venture to develop and operate a new container terminal in the port of Damietta in Egypt, after the final signing of the concession agreement which took place on 10 May in Cairo, Egypt.
The joint venture “Damietta Alliance Container Terminal S.A.E.” consists of three core shareholders, Hapag-Lloyd Damietta GmbH – 39%, Eurogate Damietta GmbH – 29.5% and Contship Damietta Srl – 29.5% and two extra partners, Middle East Logistics & Consultants Group and Ship & C.R.E.W. Egypt S.A.E., will each hold 1%.
The new “Terminal 2” at the port of Damietta is expected to start operations by 2024 and will have a final total operational capacity of 3.3 million TEU.
“With the new terminal Hapag-Lloyd will significantly improve its transshipment operation in the East Mediterranean market as well as access to the local Egyptian trade,” said Rolf Habben Jansen, CEO of Hapag-Lloyd.
The concession to operate the facility is granted to the joint venture for 30 years, according to Cecilia Eckelmann-Battistello, chairman of the board of Contship Italia, who noted “this gives us and our respective customers a long-term perspective in the port of Damietta.”
The Egyptian Minister of Transport, Lieutenant-General Eng. Kamel Al-Wazir, commented, “This is a very encouraging, well planned partnership of international and Egyptian private sector in order to position Egypt as a global hub for logistics and trade. In this first phase, we will establish the port of Damietta as an integrated logistics hub for containers, which will then be followed by the establishment of logistic corridors reaching to different manufacturing areas in Egypt by railway network.”
