Saudi ports have drawn more than SR5.5 billion ($1.46 billion) in investments since the onset of the regional crisis, according to Suliman bin Khalid Al-Mazroua, president of the Saudi Ports Authority (Mawani), who put the figure in an interview with Al-Eqtisadiah and elaborated on it on the sidelines of the Saudi Industry Forum 2026 in Jeddah.
Al-Mazroua traced the shift to the West Coast, where Jeddah Port and its surrounding facilities turned into a primary gateway for the Kingdom and the Arabian Gulf as shipping patterns were redrawn. Truck movements through Jeddah Islamic Port climbed from a pre-crisis range of 2,000 to 2,500 entries a day to above 10,000, while the number of arriving vessels also rose, with more than 34 ships from major global carriers, among them Maersk and MSC, now calling at the port.
Operational readiness was reinforced through 16 initiatives carried out in coordination with government and customs agencies, and more than SR640 million was deployed over three months to expand the port's ability to take in and process containers moving by land and sea. Al-Mazroua described Jeddah as a front-ranking hub for the Kingdom's imports and exports, noting that closer integration among West Coast ports has given Saudi Arabia more room to absorb shocks in global supply chains, with Yanbu serving the food security system, King Abdullah Port handling its own specialized load, and NEOM Port supporting traffic linked to Egypt.
Transshipment containers surpassed 370,000 units across five months, alongside more than 1 million units of general and bulk cargo, and Al-Mazroua expects those volumes to grow further before the year closes on the back of sustained demand. He pointed to the next phase as one of heavier investment in the port sector, the build-out of special economic zones, and the creation of more efficient logistics zones across the Kingdom's public ports on both coasts.