Bahrain Airport Company (BAC) is proceeding with plans to develop its Cargo Village project at Bahrain International airport.

FedEx has been signed up as an anchor tenant for the development, and contractors are preparing to submit bids for construction work on the project.

The project is of strategic importance for Bahrain as it supports the recently launched national logistics plan, which includes the region’s fastest multi-modal logistics hub with a two-hour turnaround time for all containers.

The Bahrain Global Sea-Air Hub relies on streamlined clearance procedures, optimised logistics and full digitisation to achieve an end-to-end lead time of just under two hours for goods transiting from Bahrain International airport to Khalifa bin Salman Port and vice versa.

“His excellency the minister of transport and telecommunication launched the national cargo and logistics plan last week [late September], and the Cargo Village is a major part of that,” said Mohamed Yousif al-Binfalah, CEO of BAC, in an interview with MEED.

“We have allocated a plot of land within the airport to attract express cargo operators and we have signed our anchor tenant FedEx.”

“For construction, we have the tender out in the market. We just extended the closing date for the tender by two or three weeks to give the contractors time to prepare their bids. By the third week of this month [October] we will receive offers from them.”

Phase one of the project includes warehouses for FedEx and two other warehouses for future tenants, a central processing unit, and security and customs buildings.

Talks are ongoing for other tenants at the cargo village. “We are talking to other interested tenants. We cannot announce anything until we close commercial deals. But we are very optimistic there is a keen interest in setting up businesses at the airport. There is a renewed interest in investing in cargo and commercial cargo,” said Al-Binfalah.

“Last year, despite Covid, there was an increase of around 5 per cent in cargo volumes compared to the year before.”

For the Bahrain Global Sea-Air Hub, BAC will work with other agencies and authorities in Bahrain.

“We are due to sit down with our colleagues at the port to explore this concept and see how we can link the airport to the seaport. There are a lot of synergies and advantages in terms of reduced cost, faster processing of goods, and that is another opportunity,” said Al-Binfalah.

Al-Binfalah said that while some new infrastructure may be required, the focus will be on improving connections using existing infrastructure.

“There are two things. There is an element of infrastructure. But the main thing is procedural and protocol,” he said. “We have a lot of the infrastructure in place, be it on the port side or the airport side. It is a matter of working out the procedures and the protocols that will manage this.”