One sign that Sohar Industrial Port is fast gearing itself up to meet the challenges of serving new production facilities in the area is the progress made in establishing a container terminal.

Oman International Container Terminal (OICT) has announced that its Terminal B Phase 1, which is located adjacent to the general cargo terminal, will be ready to provide service in September 2006.
OICT is a member of the Hutchison Port Holdings (HPH) Group, the world’s leading port developers and operators. Terminal B, which OICT will operate exclusively, will have a capacity of 800,000 teu in a total yard area of 26 hectares and with a total quay length of 520 m and draft at 16 m. 
Equipment includes four post panamax quay cranes, eight rubber-tyred gantry cranes (RTGCs) and two reach stackers supported by a fleet of 15 tractors and 33 trailers.  The facilities also provide an engineering workshop, a customs inspection area, an administrative building and a gatehouse complex.
In mid-June, 15 heavy-duty yard tractors destined for Oman International Container Terminal (OICT) at Sohar Industrial Port arrived in Muscat. “The arrival of this heavy equipment is the significant beginning of an important new stage in OICT’s development as the container terminal gears up to receive large-scale shipments of the most technologically advanced port equipment over the next month,” a company spokesman said. 
Shortly afterwards, OICT took delivery of four new rubber-tyred gantry cranes (RTGC’s). These cranes are equipped with the latest safety and automotive technological features to stack containers one over six high and advanced Global Positioning Systems, position determining systems to track the exact location of the boxes in the container yard.  Equally, the advanced HPH proprietary Anti-truck Lifting System (ATLS) will be adapted to each crane as an additional safety and performance feature.
Between July and September 2006, Phase 1 facilities will be handed over to operations and include 270 m of quay and 33 per cent of yard stacking area. This month (July) OICT will take delivery of all operational plant and equipment, which will arrive by large barges from Hong Kong.
Phase 2, which completes in Feb 2007, provides the total quay length of 520 m and a container stacking area of 26 hectares.
“Initially the export cargo will originate from the Sohar Industrial Port. In addition to that, we’ll have export cargo coming from the Sohar Industrial Estate,” said OICT’s chief executive officer James Frater.
“And as industry in the port grows and the community in Sohar expands, we will see continued growth in local domestic cargo.”
Frater said the port would provide shipping lines a new source of export cargo and also the facilities to cater for transshipments business.
The challenges facing Sohar Industrial Port are that being a new port it will have to develop on its own and serve new industries arising in a spectrum of industries, said Frater. It would play a key role in developing supporting and downstream industries. All this would have an extremely positive impact on the national economy. One of the repercussions of industrial growth would be the generation of employment for the Sultanate’s youth. “It will actually grow their careers across a whole range of industries,” said Frater. OICT itself is contributing towards that end with a recruiting programme for locals under which it will train them in the Hutchison group headquarters in Hongkong and in Karachi, where the group runs a terminal.
For Hutchison, Sohar Industrial Port is one of three ports it is operating in the Africa Middle East region, the others being in Dammam and Tanzania. Another major operation will be centred on Alexandria, Egypt, where it is developing two terminals. Commenting on Hutchinson’s growth in this part of the world, Frater said: “We’re establishing ourselves as a major terminal operator in the Gulf region.”
As well as being the world’s leading port developers and operators, the HPH Group has the reputation of being an industry leader in the application of technologies to strengthen the entire transportation and logistics chain. 
It operates 247 berths in 42 ports along with a number of transportation-related service companies. In 2005, the group handled 51.8 million teu.