King Mohammed VI has chaired at the Royal Palace in Casablanca this Wednesday a working meeting devoted to the new port and industrial complex of Nador West Med, which is part an efficient and complementary national port system that will boost competitiveness of the national economy, create jobs, and promote balanced territorial development.
This working meeting, which comes ahead of the port’s operational launch in the fourth quarter of this year, is part of the royal vision aimed at sustainably anchoring the Kingdom’s economy to global value chains through the establishment of world-class port infrastructure, said the Royal Office in a statement.
During the working meeting, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Nador West Med, Fouad Brini, made a presentation on the progress of the project and the achievements to date.
Following the international success of Tanger Med, which has become the leading port hub in Africa and the Mediterranean, the new Nador West Med project extends this royal ambition to build an efficient and complementary national port system that will boost competitiveness of the national economy, create jobs, and promote balanced territorial development, the statement said.
Nador West Med, designed as an integrated project, is based on a next-generation port complex backed by a vast industrial, logistics, and energy platform. To this day, it has attracted public and private investment totaling MAD 51 billion.
According to the statement, all basic infrastructure of the port is now complete and includes 5.4 km of breakwaters, 4 km of quays, and 4 power stations.
The port concession contracts for the two container terminals have been signed and will gradually come into effect starting this year.
Nador West Med is also rolling out a new offering, an energy hub comprising the Kingdom’s first liquefied natural gas terminal, with an annual capacity of 5 billion m³, as well as a hydrocarbon terminal, the statement said, adding that this strategic component directly addresses the Kingdom’s energy sovereignty requirements.
At the start, the port will have an annual capacity of 5 million containers and 35 million tons of liquid and solid bulk cargo. Eventually, the additional annual development potential is 12 million containers and 15 million tons of liquid bulk cargo.
Linked to the port complex, the project also provides for the deployment of new activity zones spanning an area of 700 hectares in a first phase, which have already recorded the initial installations of international operators.
Private investments in the new port and industrial complex, amounting so far to a total of MAD 20 billion, reflect the trust that leading international maritime and industrial operators place in Morocco.
At the close of the meeting, the King issued his high instructions to the various stakeholders to take all the necessary measures to ensure that the project is launched under the best conditions, and to proceed with the rapid implementation of specific training programs in order to support investors, facilitate youth integration, and enhance their employability.
The Sovereign also issued his instructions to ensure that the impact of these investments benefits all the provinces that are part of the port’s influence zone, to support the project with territorial upgrading programs in order to improve the region’s quality of life, and to implement a multidimensional action plan that preserves the future development of the project.