The Special Economic Zone Authority of Duqm (Sezad) has awarded a joint venture of Turkey’s Serka Taahhut Insaat and Portugal’s MSF Engenharia a OM107m ($278m) contract to build the infrastructure of the commercial quay at the port.

The scope includes construction of roads and the development of a port operation zone. The infrastructure will support terminals designed to handle container, break-bulk and dry-bulk cargoes at the port.

The work is expected to be completed in 2019.

The project consists of all necessary infrastructure including ground improvement, crane rails, power distribution, drainage and sewer systems, site lighting, pavements, roads, perimeter security systems, refer gantry systems and also the administrative buildings and warehouses on roughly 1 million square metres of land to serve as a container terminal at the port.

The infrastructure will support four terminals whose berths measure a combined 2.2 kilometres. The two container terminals, which are built adjacent to each other, will be able to handle 3.5 million twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) a year.

Upon completion, the infrastructure work will allow the port to transition from the current early operations phase to full-fledged commercial operations, according to Serka.

The infrastructure package awarded to Serka is one of seven separate infrastructure and facilities packages for the port. Other contractors, which submitted an offer for the contract include Consolidated Contractors Company-Oman (Lebanon); Galfar Engineering & Contracting (local); a joint venture of Strabag Oman (Austria), OSCO (Canada), and HEC (UAE); and Simplex Infrastructures (India).

In September, the UK’s Atkins won the consultancy contract for detailed master planning, market and feasibility study, design and preparation of tender documents for the first phase of the development of Duqm City.