Shahid Rajaee Port Phase 1 Ready

Phase I of Shahid Rajaee Port, Iran’s biggest container port at the mouth of the Strait of Hormuz, is ready to be inaugurated by President Hassan Rouhani, the managing director of Ports and Maritime Organization of Iran said.

“Oceangoing vessels and container ships are already docking at the port as we speak,” IRNA also quoted Mohammad Saeednejad as saying on Wednesday.

France’s CMA CGM, the world’s third largest container shipping group, also called at Shahid Rajaee early August 2016.

Noting that equipment purchased for expanding the port have been imported from European ports, the official added that two consortiums involving two Iranian and two foreign companies have been picked as the operators of Shahid Rajaee terminals 1 and 2.

Shahid Rajaee Port, located 23 kilometers west of the port city of Bandar Abbas, the capital of Hormozgan Province, has the capacity to handle up to 3.3 million TEUs (20-foot equivalent units) of containerized cargo per year.    

Shahid Rajaee accounts for more than half of Iran’s total port throughput. Some 44 million tons of goods worth more than $11.14 billion were exported by Iran and nearly 10 million tons worth $18.65 billion were imported via this southern port in the last fiscal year, registering a 44% and 12% growth in tonnage and value respectively compared to the year before.