Commercial trial operations began at AD Ports Group’s Safaga 2 multipurpose terminal on Egypt’s Red Sea coast on June 9. Two vessels marked the opening call: the UGR Al Samha from Singapore carrying 5,000 vehicles, and the Sven Prosper from King Abdullah Port carrying 2,642 twenty-foot equivalent units. Full commissioning is scheduled for later this year.
The facility sits inside a 30-year concession signed with Egypt’s Red Sea Ports Authority and is a $200 million investment by the Abu Dhabi-listed operator. It is described as the first internationally operated port terminal serving Upper Egypt, and the trial phase is the first concrete test of AD Ports’ wager on Egypt as a Red Sea logistics hub.
First Vessels Dock as Safaga 2 Enters Trial Operations
Egyptian Transport Minister Kamel El-Wazir toured the terminal alongside AD Ports Group Managing Director and Group CEO Captain Mohamed Juma Al Shamisi for the launch. The ceremony was also attended by Red Sea Governor Walid Abdel Azim, Deputy Minister of Transport for Maritime Transport Major General Nehad Shahin, Red Sea Ports Authority Chairperson Major General Mohamed Abdel Rahim, and Mohamed Fathy, Adviser to the Minister for Maritime Transport. The UGR Al Samha is an LNG-powered car carrier built in 2025 and operated by Noatum Maritime, the group’s shipping arm. The Sven Prosper arrived from Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah Port with a container load that pushed the terminal’s first-day throughput above 2,600 TEUs.
Trial operations began with the full equipment set already in place after the cranes that arrived at Safaga 2 in April. Three ship-to-shore cranes and six hybrid rubber-tyred gantry cranes now handle the yard and berth, fitted with smart container-positioning and yard-management systems. The two vessel calls confirmed basic berthing, yard and gate operations. Al Shamisi said full commercial operations are expected to begin later this year, and the minister’s tour reviewed the container-handling systems on the quay before the launch ceremony closed.
A $200 Million Terminal Built to Move Four Cargo Types
The Safaga 2 concession is AD Ports’ largest single Egypt bet to date. Signed under the December 2023 AD Ports concession release, the 30-year agreement commits $200 million to superstructure, equipment, buildings and utilities inside the concession area. The contract was sanctioned under Egypt’s Law on the Granting of Commitment Contract issued on November 1, 2023, and was signed at the Egyptian cabinet headquarters in Cairo.
The site spans approximately 810,000 square metres on the Red Sea coast. A quay wall runs between 1,000 and 1,100 metres, with a 17-metre draft deep enough to take the largest regional container ships. Three ship-to-shore cranes handle the berth interface, while six hybrid rubber-tyred gantry cranes manage the yard. The equipment mix lets the terminal move containers, dry bulk, liquid bulk and roll-on/roll-off traffic from the same berth pool.
Capacity ceilings sit well above what the trial phase will test. Container handling starts at approximately 450,000 TEUs a year, expandable to 2 million TEUs. Dry and general cargo begins at 5 million tonnes annually, rising to 7 million tonnes at full build-out. Liquid bulk capacity sits at 1 million tonnes a year, with RoRo at 50,000 car equivalent units. Trial operations are the first rung, not the top of that range.
- Site area: 810,000 sqm
- Quay wall: 1,000 to 1,100 m
- Draft: 17 m
- Container capacity at launch: 450,000 TEUs/year
- Container capacity at full build-out: 2 million TEUs/year
How the Terminal Plugs Into Egypt’s Eight National Corridors
The terminal is the Red Sea end of the Safaga-Qena-Abu Tartour logistics corridor, one of eight international corridors Egypt is building to position itself as a regional transit hub. The corridor links the port to Upper Egypt’s industrial and mining heartland, running from the Red Sea coast inland to Qena and on to Abu Tartour. For goods moving into or out of southern Egypt, the corridor replaces a long road haul with a single port-to-inland clearance chain. That design also gives the terminal a candidate transshipment role for cargo that needs to cross between Africa and the Levant, and it sets up the wider logistics zone Egypt has been marketing to industrial and warehousing tenants in Upper Egypt.
The wider ambition is the Southern Arab Trade Corridor. The route links Gulf markets to Europe through Egyptian Mediterranean ports, Safaga, NEOM and Jeddah Islamic Port. The corridor gives Gulf exporters a Red Sea path that complements, rather than replaces, the longer Indian Ocean round-trips via Suez.
The terminal carries a separate designation for African trade. Egypt has set aside an international logistics zone at the site for African partners, intended to support exports and re-exports of containerised and non-containerised cargo. For landlocked East African economies, the Safaga option is shorter and cheaper than the traditional Red Sea-Suez-Mediterranean detour via northern Egyptian ports. The wider play is to position Safaga as a southern gateway that complements, rather than duplicates, Suez traffic.
Mining is the other anchor demand. Egypt’s Transport Ministry has tied the terminal to mining activity in the Golden Triangle, the cargo base the corridor is being designed to move, a story explored in Egypt’s phosphate push and the Golden Triangle play. For AD Ports, locking in Golden Triangle volumes from day one gives the terminal anchor cargo before the wider corridor reaches full scale.
The $115 Million Stack Behind the Build
Project finance for the terminal closed earlier this year. AD Ports finalised a $115 million facility on February 3, 2026, structured as a 15-year loan. The package was led by the International Finance Corporation, the World Bank’s private-sector arm, with the National Bank of Kuwait – Egypt joining as a parallel lender under the IFC managed co-lending portfolio programme.
IFC’s own account carries $61 million of the facility, with a further $54 million mobilised from NBK – Egypt, according to the IFC announcement of its Safaga partnership. The loan went to the Safaga Terminal Operating Company, the AD Ports-owned vehicle that holds the concession. Financial close was targeted for the first quarter of 2026, subject to standard conditions precedent. For IFC, the deal extends a 50-year Egypt track record: the multilateral lender has invested and mobilised $10 billion in development projects in the country since it began operations there in 1976.
Safaga is the centre of a wider AD Ports push in Egypt. The group signed a 50-year renewable usufruct in 2025 to develop KEZAD East Port Said, a 20 square-kilometre industrial and logistics park at the Mediterranean gateway of the Suez Canal. AD Ports also runs cruise terminal services at Safaga, Hurghada and Sharm El Sheikh under a separate 15-year concession, and the group has taken a 19.328% equity stake in Alexandria Container and Cargo Handling Company while launching a mandatory tender offer that would deliver majority control, as set out in the AD Ports announcement of the $115 million facility.
Safaga 2 is one slice of the larger Safaga build-out. The Greater Safaga Port development programme is split across four pieces. The table below sets them out as Egypt’s Ministry of Transport described them at the launch.
| Phase | Function | Key specification |
|---|---|---|
| Safaga 1 | Existing Safaga Port | Operational port retained under the programme |
| Safaga 2 | Multipurpose Terminal | 810,000 sqm site, 1,000-1,100 m quay, 17 m draft, 3 STS and 6 hybrid RTG cranes |
| Safaga 3 | Dry Bulk and RoRo Terminal | Planned under the Greater Safaga Port programme |
| Safaga 4 | Three new berths and a commercial ship repair yard | Berths extend over 2 km, with a 17 m draft |
The trial run is the first of those pieces to operate, with the remaining Safaga phases covering the dry bulk and RoRo terminal and three new berths with a commercial ship-repair yard.
Enhancing trade is key to stimulating economic development, this transaction demonstrates how IFC can be a strategic enabler for South-South investments. The project will strengthen Egypt’s position as a central trade hub, lower costs for local businesses and create high-quality jobs, while also reinforcing the UAE’s position as a regional growth engine and a partner for deeper economic integration.
Makhtar Diop, Managing Director of IFC, gave the comment at the partnership announcement. The quote sits at the centre of a financing stack that, on paper, aligns a multilateral lender, a regional bank and the operator behind a single Egyptian terminal.
Climbing Toward a Top-Fifteen Trade Ranking
Egypt’s Transport Ministry used the launch to frame Safaga 2 as a step toward a specific target. The country now ranks 19th globally, first in Africa and second in the Arab world in international trade connectivity, according to the ministry. The goal is to enter the global top 15 by 2030. Al-Wazir framed the terminal as one of the infrastructure pieces that will close that gap.
The ministry is also using the launch to mark the rollout of a wider maritime strategy. The plan has four pillars: port development, modernisation of the national maritime fleet, partnerships with global operators, and legislative and digital reform. The Safaga 2 deal, the cruise concessions in Hurghada, Sharm El Sheikh and Safaga, and the KEZAD East Port Said park all sit inside that framework, alongside future integration with the high-speed electric rail network Egypt is building across the country.
The execution test still lies ahead. Egypt’s Red Sea ports are growing at 6.8% a year, IFC notes, but the southern cluster remains under-built and expensive to reach for export-oriented industries in Upper Egypt. The infrastructure gap is what IFC, the project’s lead multilateral lender, is trying to close with the Safaga facility. Trial operations at Safaga 2 will run through the coming months before full commissioning later this year, with anchor cargoes from the Golden Triangle mining zone expected to lead. AD Ports’ framing of Egypt as one of the group’s most important international markets is the bet the next two quarters will test.
