Ain Sokhna’s new truck yard is already linking with Nafeza

The Suez Canal Economic Zone (SCZone) signed a contract to develop and operate an EGP 1 bn digital truck-management yard at Ain Sokhna Port — and its link to Nafeza, Egypt’s national single window for foreign trade, is already live, according to a statement and Abir Leheta, group co-CEO of Egytrans Nosco and chairman of Nafith Egypt. The 167k sqm yard will handle up to 1.1k trucks a day at full operation, using real-time planning and digital yard management to regulate truck flow. The Nafeza integration is “live in production” and already receiving cargo clearance and release status, Leheta tells EnterpriseAM.

Where one system ends, and the other begins: “Nafith’s system manages the truck side: entry passes, driver and vehicle verification, gate processing, and flow into the terminals and yard,” Leheta says. “The integration is the handover point. Once Nafeza confirms cargo is cleared and ready for pickup, our system uses that status to admit the right truck, with the right driver, to the right terminal location at the right time.” The two systems complement each other rather than duplicate functions, she adds.

The practical payoff is fewer wasted trips. A trucker can request an entry pass only for cargo Nafeza already shows as cleared and ready for pickup, so trips sent to collect containers that aren’t ready — and the queues they create — disappear, Leheta says. That leaves less idle time for drivers and faster turnaround for terminals, she adds.

Why the integration matters: The gains will hold only if the yard actually cuts truck turnaround times rather than becoming a new place to wait, as drivers are paid on a per-trip basis. “Just because [Nafeza] reduces time at the ports doesn’t mean we should increase waiting time in the yards,” Reliance Operations & Maintenance Services Managing Director Omar Ragheb tells EnterpriseAM. That’s what AI-driven planning is for, he says. Integrating the systems is becoming “an essential approach to ensure proper planning, reduce inefficiencies at the ports or yards, and maintain transparency and complete visibility over the trucks,” he explains.

One cluster, not the whole market. Egypt’s national fleet totals around 1.3 mn trucks, of which heavy vehicles make up just 10-15%, and only a slice of those pass through Ain Sokhna, Ragheb says. The yard “won't integrate them, but it will have data with the truck numbers,” consolidating a small cluster of that fleet in one location, not solving fragmentation nationally.

IN CONTEXT- Road transport handles more than 90% of Egypt’s domestic freight, and that volume is projected to grow 1.8% to 97.1 mn tons by 2030. The fleet moving it is highly fragmented: around 90% of the country’s trucks are individually owned.

Fragmentation needs replication: The yard “could be a stepping stone to overcome fragmentation if it is replicated across the entire country,” Ragheb says. Scaled nationally, the model would force common standards on payments, safety, and accounting, “and this is what’s going to make the sector much, much more efficient,” he adds. Ragheb argues the state has to drive that shift for the business model to become the norm.

The architecture is built to scale. Nafith runs its yards, including the 114k sqm West Port Said site, on one unified platform, Leheta says, so an integration built once, such as the Nafeza interface, can extend to other sites instead of being rebuilt each time. That gives SCZone’s ports a foundation that can plug into a future national system without starting over, she adds.

Built for owner-drivers: “An owner-driver doesn’t need fleet software, just simple access to our platform,” Leheta says. Nafith’s on-ground team trained and registered drivers and trucks prior to launch, following a pilot phase that tested the workflow with real operators, she says. On-site registration desks and a dedicated support hotline were also established to assist drivers less accustomed to digital tools, she adds. “Bringing users on before launch made adoption part of the solution rather than a new source of delay.”

ICYMI- The government is separately moving to bring overland freight into Nafeza for the first time. The Finance Ministry has begun surveying road freight firms to register and link them electronically to the single window, starting at Red Sea ports such as Nuweiba and Safaga, three officials told us this month. That would fold truck-borne cargo into the same electronic system governing sea and air freight.

WATCH THIS SPACE- Ain Sokhna proves the model works at one gateway — the open question is whether it becomes the national standard. Ragheb’s benchmark is Saudi Arabia, where a single registration-and-yard system governs the whole sector, and the shared architecture behind Nafith’s yards means the technical path to get there is already laid.

And in the Egytrans Nosco world…

Egytrans Nosco stalled the shareholder vote on its EGX delisting ahead of a potential takeover by MSC’s pan-African logistics arm Africa Global Logistics (AGL). The board voted unanimously on Thursday to hold off on calling the EGM that was meant to approve its voluntary delisting, according to a bourse filing (pdf). Whatever the board decides next will still need the Financial Regulatory Authority’s (FRA) sign-off.

REFRESHER- The FRA gave AGL until 21 December to submit its mandatory tender offer, granting a 60-working-day extension from 27 September after the group asked for extra time earlier this month. AGL offered EGP 11.25-12.25 a share in late June for up to 100% of Egytrans Nosco with a 75% floor — valuing the company at EGP 2.76 bn at the top end, an 18.4% premium to the pre-news close. It still needs clearance from Egypt’s Competition Authority, Comesa, and Saudi Arabia’s General Authority for Competition.

Inside the NBFI firestorm with Hazem Moussa: For a few months, alarms have sounded across the board, cautioning of an impending credit bubble. Are they warranted?

On this episode of Making It, Hazem Moussa, co-founder of Contact Financial Holding, joins Patrick to break down how a bubble in the credit industry actually forms, what regulators should watch out for, the risks on both sides, and the responsibility that lies on the client side — us, the consumers.

Listen to the episode on: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Anghami | YouTube

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