JEDDAH, 6 January 2008 — Following the “success” of the first warehouse village at the Tusdeer Free Zone of Jeddah Islamic Port (JIP), a new move was made yesterday to construct its second phase.
The deal for constructing a second warehouse village was signed by Aamer A. Alireza, CEO of Red Sea Gateway Terminal and executive president and member of the board of directors of Tusdeer, and Rafic A. Kreidie, general manager of Rafic A. Kreidie Engineers & Contractors.
Tusdeer, a subsidiary of Saudi Trade & Export Development Co., which owns and manages the first free zone at the JIP. The second warehouse village will comprise 34 warehouses and will become operational within 12 months.
“The launch of the second phase follows the success of the first phase and growing demand for warehouses,” Alireza told Arab News. “Tusdeer has leased all of 36 of its warehouses in the first village. All of them have been constructed on the basis of latest international specifications,” he said, adding that all customers were “blue chip clients” of the Kingdom.
“Today, overseas companies are also showing lot of interest in our projects. They are keen to take advantage of various facilities offered at the JIP including information technology and inventory control,” he said.
Each warehouse has an area of 503 sq m and its height ranges from 6 to 8.5 meters. Each contains all the support services and facilities in the zone including an electricity connection of 380 watts, water, firefighting system, administrative office, water closet and kitchen. The Khatib & Alami Consultancy will conduct the engineering supervision of the project.
Alireza said the customers and investors in the zone would enjoy many facilities including storage of commodities without customs duty and their re-export partly or wholly. The courtyards of warehouses will have storage space for general commodities, construction material, equipment and vehicles.
Tusdeeer and Red Sea Gateway Terminal have undertaken the construction of the first private container terminal adjacent to the JIP at a cost of SR1.62 billion, with an annual capacity of 1.5 million containers.
