Mahdi Allawatia

Projects Director

Mahdi Allawatia is Projects Director at SOHAR Port and Freezone in the Sultanate of Oman, a member of this conference’s advisory committee and a speaker at it. SOHAR is among the region’s most cited industrial port models: established as a fifty-fifty partnership between the Government of Oman and the Port of Rotterdam, and built on the idea of joining a port to an industrial estate and a free zone as one system rather than a handling quay alone. It sits outside the Strait of Hormuz, a geographic advantage that has made it an alternative for cargo avoiding passage through the strait. Managing projects at a port of this composition means coordinating expansion across quays, plants and the free zone at once.