Tusdeer Free Zone will have a brand new warehouse village of 34 units next year.

It joins an existing warehouse cluster comprising the same number of units, all of which are in use.
Mohammed Ali Al-Saeed, Tusdeer’s bonded and re-exports zone (BRZ) manager, said the creation of a new warehouse village became imperative because demand was rising from local, GCC and international customers and there was no more space left to house them.
Having a presence at Tusdeer adds value to the cargo and the owner of the cargo, explained Al-Saeed.  “You can bring your cargo here with no Saudi specifications and you’ll be able to store it for three years with no questions asked by customs.
”We are part of Jeddah Islamic Port actually and what happens there is that once your cargo is in port for 13 days you have to clear it. If you don’t do that you will be charged SR20 per tonne per day,” he went on to say.
“At Tusdeer, you will have your own warehouse or your own empty lot, and you can have the key. You open it, use it when you like and bring whatever you like. Of course, we don’t talk of forbidden things. According to Saudi rules and regulations you are entitled to bring whatever cargo you like to Tusdeer as long as it is complies with Saudi standards and store it there for whatever period. You can add value to your cargo. You can sell it to a Saudi or a foreigner. You can export it. You can send it to some country on the way to another country. You can transfer ownership of the cargo within the zone or maybe outside the zone.”
Al-Saeed said the free zone met the main objective of the port to promote the export industry.  It added value to Saudi and foreign merchandise.
About fees, the official said: “We are competitive, and regarding the warehouses, we are in a better position pricewise than, say, Jebel Ali.”
Al-Saeed recalls the time before work on the Tusdeer free zone commenced: “The whole project area was an expanse of water actually. It was just sea. We invested about SR20 million. Now we have an empty lot; we have a warehouse village of 34 units and we plan to have another village. At the same time, we have a contract with the Saudi ports authority to build a container terminal that will be able to accommodate 4-5 ships simultaneously and this will be much more than a container terminal. We believe it will add value to the port. This terminal is supposed to receive 1.5 million containers and it will add to what is received in the port today.
“Reclamation started in 1999 and there were four zones. We started operations in July 2000 while the reclamation was still taking place in zone 4. By 2001, the project was, reclamation-wise, completed and we had the warehouse village built. It is all operational today – all 34 warehouses.
Tusdeer functions under a build, operate and transfer (BOT) arrangement and has been granted a 40-year concession.
Al-Saeed, explaining his designation, said the bonded and re-export zone was actually another name for the free zone. “As we didn’t have the title free zone yet from the government, they named it the bonded and re-export zone - bonded from the customs point of view and re-export from the port point of view.