Container throughput across the Kingdom's ports continued its upward year-on-year movement during October 2022, soaring to 694,517 TEUs at 15.33% from last year's total of 602,210 TEUs. Optimizing operational efficiency and attracting big-ticket investments have remained a major focus for the Saudi Ports Authority (Mawani) in its journey to stay ahead of developments in the maritime and logistics industries, upgrade port facilities, and boost customer satisfaction. A detailed view of last month's container numbers reveal a 17.75% rise in exported boxes at 202,030 TEUs in comparison to 171,579 TEUs in 2021. Similarly, imported containers were up by 23.02% to 214,174 TEUs from 174,090 TEUs a year earlier while transshipments gained 8.49% to hit 278,313 TEUs against last year's 256,541 TEUs. On the other hand, cargo throughput witnessed a 3.34% spike from 25,858,562 tons in October 2021 to 26,722,044 tons this year. Growth remained the dominant trend across most cargo categories, with general cargo leapfrogging by 85.51% to 938,390 tons from 505,855 tons last year and dry bulk cargo surging to 4,942,911 tons at 20.89% in contrast to 4,088,668 tons during 2021. However, this was negated by liquid bulk cargo, which plunged by 6.81% to 13,638,345 tons from 14,634,481 tons the prior year. October's statistics further show around 1,411 vessels docking at Saudi ports, which represents a 28.04% increase relative to last year's tally of 1,102 ships. Imported vehicles, too, shot up by 69.41% to 92,998 units compared to 54,894 units during the same period last year whereas passenger traffic amounted to 44,268 pax. In a bid to strengthen national food security and fulfil local demand, food volumes climbed up at a 12.35% yearly growth rate to 2,364,943 tons from 2,104,962 tons besides 198,947 cattle heads making their way into the Kingdom, an enormous jump of 129.43% over last year's count of 86,715. By driving effective public-private partnerships, overhauling processes and automating operations, Mawani is firmly on track towards enhancing overall efficiency, promoting the Kingdom's imports and exports, and building a robust legislative and regulatory environment as it looks forward to fulfil the objectives of the National Transport and Logistics Strategy (NTLS) to transform Saudi Arabia into a global logistics center at the crossroads of three major continents.
