Saudi Arabia has been attracting media attention lately, and not only because Cristiano Ronaldo joined one of its football clubs. News about major investments in one of the UAE’s key shipping hubs caught the attention of reporters in the industry, who chose to shed light on the container shipping expansion programmes Saudi Arabia has in store for the near future. The latest $2.4 billion investment, announced last month, will give the country stakes in Dubai Port World developments, including Jebel Ali Port, Jebel Ali Free Zone, and the National Industries Park. With this expenditure and other projects in the country, Saudi Arabia seeks to expand its annual container throughput to 40 million TEU by 2030, reported Bloomberg in an article. Last year, the largest country in the Middle East announced a number of mega-sized projects, including the $500 billion NEOM project, which aims at building the world’s first cognitive city in the heart of the desert. According to JOC, the plans for NEOM include a container port with an annual handling capacity of 9 million TEU. Back in November, the country announced yet another project within NEOM called Oxagon. “Ideally located on the Red Sea close to the Suez Canal, through which approximately 13% of the globe’s trade passes, Oxagon will be one of the world’s most technologically advanced logistics hubs with state-of-the-art integrated port and airport connectivity,” according to a press release. "A defining feature of the city is the world’s largest floating structure, which will become a centre for NEOM’s Blue Economy and achieve sustainable growth." Other developments include the expansion of Duba Port and the modernisation of two Jeddah container terminals. The Duba project in the northeast of the country is expected to increase its capacity up to 4m TEU by 2030. As for Jeddah Port, the development plans involve investing up to $500 million to improve the terminals and increase the annual capacity from 2.4 million TEU to 3.9 million TEU, according to terminal operators DP World. Carriers have also been showing interest in the ports of Saudi Arabia. Recently, Hapag-Lloyd and CMA CGM jointly announced adding Jeddah Port to one of their fastest connection between West India and the US East Coast, the Indamex 2. “This call will offer new opportunities of business development for the whole region with connectivity from Jordan, Djibouti, or Egypt,” CMA CGM said in a trade notice. At present, the Saudi Ports Authority (Mawani) regulates, owns, and operates most of the country’s ports. According to the most recent figures published by the authority, containerized cargo across Saudi ports has maintained its growth during the month of November, growing by 8.3% to more than 630,000 TEUs from nearly 582,000 TEUs last year. In addition, Mawani reported it handled 1.98 million TEU during the third quarter of 2022 compared to 1.79 TEU in 2021.