SCZone signs EGP 1 bn agreement for a digital truck yard in Ain Sokhna

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WHAT WE’RE TRACKING TODAY

TODAY: Ain Sokhna’s new truck yard is already linking with Nafeza + Iraq's overland Hormuz bypass now runs both ways

Good morning, nice people — the region is upgrading everything except its trust in Hormuz.

Egypt's truck yards are getting a digital upgrade: A new EGP 1 bn digital yard at Ain Sokhna is already integrating with Nafeza, meaning truckers can only request entry passes for cargo that's already cleared — fewer wasted trips, faster turnaround, and a possible model for the rest of the country if the early gains hold.

Meanwhile, Iraq's overland route around Hormuz now runs both ways. Syria has started trucking gasoline into Iraq. The first cargo, about 32.8k tons, unloaded at Baniyas and was already rolling toward the Iraqi border on the first of what will be many trucks.

And Qatar still doesn't trust Hormuz, even as more of its LNG slips through. QatarEnergy has extended force majeure to buyers across Asia and Europe despite a pickup in Qatar-linked tanker traffic. Pakistan, Bangladesh, and at least one Indian buyer won't see cargoes until November, and Edison in Italy is on hold until early December.

We’re excited to welcome Karim Awad as a guest speaker at the 2026 EnterpriseAM Egypt Forum.

Karim Awad is group CEO, chairman of the executive committee, and a member of the board of directors of EFG Holding S.A.E., a financial institution with a universal bank in Egypt and the leading investment bank in the Middle East and North Africa. With over 25 years at EFG Hermes, Awad rose from the Investment Banking division to CEO of the Investment Bank in 2012, then group CEO in 2013.

Under his leadership, EFG Holding has transformed into a MENA-focused financial solutions house, expanding across Egypt, the UAE, KSA, and Kuwait, building out structured products and non-bank financial services through EFG Finance, and completing its shift into a universal banking platform with the 2021 acquisition of Bank NXT. The firm's revenues reached EGP 26.0 bn and profits EGP 4.1 bn in 2025.

Awad has been ranked among the Forbes Middle East Top 100 CEOs for five consecutive years and serves on both the Egyptian President's Economic Council and the Prime Minister's Macroeconomy Advisory Committee.

Join us on 5 October in Cairo. Attendance is by invitation only, and we've reached full capacity.

Request your invitation here to join the waitlist.

Banking on the gas

Aramco has hired a banker for its gas carve-out, moving the plan toward an actual transaction. The oil giant has hired Evercore to advise on the restructuring — internally called Project Gamma — that would separate its gas operations into a standalone division, Bloomberg reports, citing people familiar with the matter. Boston Consulting Group is also advising on the restructuring, recommending the split as a way to unlock value.

Why it matters: At north of USD 100 bn, the gas unit would be worth roughly three times as much as Sabic, Aramco’s listed chemicals arm, and would be the biggest single lever in a program to monetize up to USD 35 bn of assets to fund state projects and dividend payouts. Sabic is also the cautionary reference point — its shares are down more than 20% over the past year, and that is the appetite any minority listing would be sold into.

REMEMBER- Aramco has run this structure before. Last year, a BlackRock GIP-led consortium invested USD 11 bn in Aramco’s gas-processing infrastructure at Jafurah through a lease-and-leaseback. The assets were housed in Jafurah Midstream Gas Company, with Aramco retaining a 51% stake and the consortium taking 49%, before being leased back to Aramco for 20 years.

L'imad goes for the last 1.07% of AD Ports

L’imad is pushing ahead with its squeeze-out of AD Ports, issuing a mandatory acquisition notice to take over the remaining 1.07% stake in the firm via ADQ after it recently lifted its holding to 98.93%, according to an ADX disclosure (pdf). The buyout settled two weeks ahead of schedule, having moved a 9 October deadline forward to 25 September. L’imad has wasted no time with the squeeze-out either, moving ahead with the notice significantly faster than the 60-day deadline.

ADQ is officially tidying up its cap table: ADQ, acting through L’imad Holding, is now above the 90%-plus-one-share threshold required to trigger the squeeze-out under Abu Dhabi’s M&A rules. The compulsory acquisition covers all shares not already held by the acquirer and will be followed by a challenge period, after which a delisting is likely to take place.

ICYMI- This comes after the 15 September close of a voluntary tender offer in which ADQ secured 23.08% of AD Ports, or about 94% of the shares that it didn’t already own. L’imad had played the same cards with Taqa, moving to take full control through Abu Dhabi Power, before delisting it from the ADX.

Fast-tracking the paper trail

Egypt and Russia are in talks to streamline bilateral trade and advance a freetrade agreement, Russia’s Industry and Trade Ministry said in a statement. Talks also covered digitizing cross-border documents and developing new logistics routes

Russia has lined up the first tenants for its industrial zone (RIZ) in Egypt's Suez Canal Economic Zone, Deputy Industry and Trade Minister Roman Chekushov says, but none have been named. Russian exports to Egypt hit USD 5.9 bn between January and July, up 15.6% y-o-y, according to the statement.

IN CONTEXT- As we’ve previously reported, the RIZ could draw USD 5 bn in investment by 2028, with some 30 Russian firms scoping it out and construction set to kick off this year under a 49-year tax and customs incentive package. The original intergovernmental agreement for a RIZ dates back to 2018, initially planned for East Port Said before shifting to Ain Sokhna.

Market watch

Oil prices climbed this morning as Middle East supply fears outweighed recovering regional exports, Reuters reports. Brent crude futures gained USD 1.49 to USD 106.77 / bbl by 03.26 GMT, while West Texas Intermediate (WTI) increased USD 1.34 to USD 93.94 / bbl.

The Baltic Index inches lower: The Baltic Exchange’s dry bulk index — which tracks rates for the capesize, panamax, and supramax vessel segments — was down 4.6% to 3,268 points on Monday. The capesize index dipped 7.5% to 5,351 points, while the panamax fell 0.2% to 2,402 points. The smaller supramax inched up 0.2% to 1,790 points.

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Ain Sokhna's truck yard plugs into Nafeza and could be a template for Egypt's fragmented trucking sector

Egypt’s 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.

Payments, safety, accounting: a national rollout would standardize all three. 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.

Meanwhile, Egytrans Nosco's suitor is taking its time

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.

Syria starts trucking gasoline into Iraq, turning Baghdad's Hormuz bypass into a two-way route

Iraq’s overland route around Hormuz now carries fuel into the country as well as out of it. Syria has started trucking gasoline into Iraq, Tareq Shallash, director of the Refining Directorate at state-owned Syrian Petroleum Company, told Reuters on Friday. The first cargo of about 32.8k tons was unloaded at Baniyas port and was being loaded onto trucks last week. At least 77 of those trucks had already left for the Iraqi border, with more queued behind them.

Until now, the traffic ran one way: Baghdad began pushing fuel oil overland through Syria after disruptions squeezed its usual Gulf export chain. More than 600k tons reached Syria in June for onward shipment from Baniyas. The gasoline adds a return leg to a route that started as an emergency export outlet.

The mechanics: Iraq’s state-owned Somo signed a supply contract with Qatar’s UCC Holding, which sources the gasoline, ships it to Baniyas by tanker, and hands it off to trucks for the overland leg into Iraq, Iraqi Oil Ministry spokesperson Saleem Al Rikabi told the newswire. The fuel was neither produced in Syria nor taken from domestic supplies, Shallash said, noting that Damascus is a transit point, not a supplier.

Why this matters: The corridor could broaden beyond gas, and some of that expansion was already in the works. The current transit agreement covers only gasoline, but future agreements could open the route to other petroleum products, crude, or even non-energy cargo, Shallash said. In June, Iraq was already preparing to move crude and naphtha through Baniyas, with initial crude volumes of c. 50k bbl / d expected once loading infrastructure was completed.

The caveat: the road is already full

More cargo means more trucks on a route that is already congested. Baniyas was handling around 900 tanker trucks a day, which created long queues and showed how hard it is to move large volumes by road.

The border is the easier fix: Iraq and Syria agreed last week to link their customs systems digitally — giving authorities on both sides shared access to shipment data and a shot at faster clearance. Traffic runs through three crossings — Al Qaim-Abu Kamal, open since June 2025, and Al Tanf-Waleed and Yarubiyah-Rabia, which reopened in April as Baghdad stepped up overland oil shipments.

What’s next: Pipelines could be the answer to the truck problem. Baghdad and Damascus signed an MoU in July to restore a pipeline link to Baniyas that could carry around 300k bbl / d, taking a large share of this traffic off the road. Further out, Iraq is developing the USD 4.6 bn Basra-Haditha pipeline, which could eventually tie into Turkey’s Ceyhan export corridor and give Baghdad another route around Hormuz.

More Qatari LNG is getting through Hormuz, but QatarEnergy isn't ready to promise deliveries

Qatar still doesn’t trust Hormuz, even as more of its LNG slips through. QatarEnergy has extended force majeure to buyers across Asia and Europe despite a pickup in Qatar-linked tanker traffic, Bloomberg reports. Pakistan, Bangladesh, and at least one Indian buyer won't receive cargoes until November, and shipments to Italy's Edison are suspended until early December.

REMEMBER- Qatar had extended force majeure on Italy’s energy firm Edison LNG deliveries until early November earlier this month.

A trickle, not a thaw: No Qatar-linked crossings were visible in August, but at least five loaded vessels have turned up outside the Gulf since mid-September, Reuters reports, citing Kpler data. The latest, GasLog Skagen, surfaced off Sri Lanka on 27 September with a Ras Laffan cargo. Some ships still cross Hormuz with their transponders off, so the tracking data doesn't capture every crossing.

Why this matters: QatarEnergy's buyers now have to plan for winter without it. Extending force majeure into November and December tells customers that a few ships getting through doesn't change the schedule. Pakistan, Bangladesh, and the other affected buyers will need to cover the gap elsewhere heading into peak demand. QatarEnergy has extended force majeure and canceled scheduled cargoes roughly once a month since the war began, so the crossings haven't yet changed how it runs its contracts.

Oil producers can reroute around Hormuz, but almost all Qatari LNG must pass through it. Ras Laffan has no export terminal outside the Gulf that could bypass the strait. The ship-to-ship workaround Qatar has found is narrow, since few tankers can handle LNG's chilled cargo. The other option is commercial: buying US cargoes and shipping them straight from American terminals to customers.

Hormuz isn't Qatar's only problem either: Two Ras Laffan trains have been offline since strikes hit the complex earlier this year, taking out roughly 12.8 mtpa, about 17% of Qatar's export capacity. QatarEnergy says repairs will take three to five years.

JD.com adds Kezad warehouse project to its growing Gulf logistics footprint

JD.com is on its third Gulf agreement in about 14 months. Kezad Group has signed an agreement with Jingdong Property, JD.com’s infrastructure arm, to develop a 150k sqm logistics facility at Kezad Al Ma’mourah in Abu Dhabi, due for delivery in 2028, state news agency Wam reports. The site will offer warehousing and logistics services to local and international companies.

Kezad joins an airport JV in Abu Dhabi and a delivery business in Saudi. Jingdong Property formed a JV with Abu Dhabi Airports last year to develop more than 70k sqm of bonded and non-bonded warehouses at Abu Dhabi Airports Freezone Logistics Park. JD Logistics also launched its own B2C delivery service in Saudi Arabia — JoyExpress — and plans to build warehouses, transfer and sorting centers, and delivery stations across the Kingdom.

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11-13 November (Wednesday-Friday): Logitrans, Istanbul, Turkey.

18-19 November (Wednesday-Thursday): Breakbulk Asia, Singapore.

FEBRUARY 2027

10-12 February (Wednesday-Friday): Routes Americas, San Juan, Puerto Rico.

MARCH 2027

16-18 March (Tuesday-Thursday): CMA Shipping, Houston, US.

16-18 March (Tuesday-Thursday): Routes Asia, New Delhi, India.

APRIL 2027

20-22 April (Tuesday-Thursday): Routes Europe, Antalya, Turkey.

26-29 April (Monday-Thursday): Transport Logistic and air cargo Europe, Munich, Germany.

26-29 April (Monday-Thursday): Saudi Smart Logistics, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

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