UAE East Coast Ports Quadruple Container Volumes as DP World Targets 21.9 Million TEU

He spoke at a session on the UAE as a global hub for trade and supply chains alongside Essa Kazim, chairman of DP World, who said the port operator's container terminals in the UAE will reach a combined capacity of 21.9 million TEU a year once its new Al Rugaylat port and Dibba terminal in Fujairah are complete.

The figures give the clearest official account yet of how far UAE trade has shifted towards the east coast, which sits outside the Strait of Hormuz, over a year in which shipping through the Gulf has been repeatedly disrupted. General and bulk cargo through the east coast ports rose from 5 million to 15.8 million metric tonnes over the same period, up 216%, according to Al Mazrouei, while operating capacity at those ports was raised by 30% through more handling equipment and facilities. Etihad Rail trains increased from one trip a week to seven trips a day, he said.

A Land Bridge to Jebel Ali

Kazim said DP World linked Jebel Ali with the ports of Khor Fakkan, Fujairah, Sohar and Jeddah through a land bridge that has carried more than 840,000 containers, an average of 3,500 a day. Khor Fakkan and Fujairah accounted for about 95% of that traffic, which included food, retail goods, furniture and building materials. To move the cargo by road, the group expanded its truck fleet from 120 vehicles to about 3,500, he said.

He set that against the scale of Jebel Ali itself, which handled about 15.6 million TEU in 2025, an average of 1.3 million a month or roughly 43,000 containers a day, and through which about 80% of the UAE's containerised imports pass.

Al Rugaylat alone will add capacity equal to about half of the country's containerised import needs on the east coast, Kazim said, giving importers a second gateway to supply the domestic market. The port will handle both containers and general cargo, while the Dibba terminal will handle 3.6 million metric tonnes of general cargo. When DP World announced the 50-year concession with the Fujairah Ports Authority in July, it said Al Rugaylat would be designed for up to 2.5 million TEU a year and that construction would take about 24 to 30 months, delivered in phases. The company said at the time that the two terminals would lift its UAE container capacity from 19.4 million TEU to almost 22 million.

Kazim also said DP World is operating a new berth at Fujairah for Emirates Global Aluminium, which has handled 341,000 tonnes of imported alumina and 33,000 tonnes of finished aluminium for export. Further afield, the group has opened a route from Jebel Ali to Umm Qasr in Iraq and on through Turkey to Europe, and since July has run sailings between Jebel Ali and ports in India and Karachi in Pakistan that have carried 58,000 containers.

Roads, Water and Power

Al Mazrouei presented the fourth federal road corridor, a 148-kilometre route from Ras Al Khaimah to the border area with Saudi Arabia designed through the UAE Infrastructure Council. Eighty kilometres of the road fall in Dubai and 68 kilometres are federal. He said planners are studying links from the corridor towards the east coast to connect ports with logistics centres and border crossings, and are working with local authorities to fix final routes.

The minister also set targets to more than double the strategic groundwater reserve from 5.6 billion to 12 billion gallons by 2028, to raise the east coast's share of desalinated water from 15% to 27% by 2036, and to lift renewable energy capacity from 8.2 gigawatts to more than 23 gigawatts by 2031.

The Government Annual Meetings bring together about 500 federal and local officials to review national priorities. The first phase of DP World's east coast terminals is due to come into service within the 24 to 30 month construction window the company gave in July.