Oman Airports, the state-owned company operating and managing the international and domestic airports in the Sultanate, has initiated steps to lay the initial building blocks of a new Airport City planned at Muscat International Airport.
Earlier this week, the company invited qualified contractors to bid for its contract to build the infrastructure for a Logistics Gate – one of several economic clusters envisioned as part of the ambitious Airport City project in Muscat. Bid submissions are due by June 12, 2021 for Phase 1 of the Logistics Gate project, Oman Airports noted in its tender announcement.
First unveiled in 2019, Muscat Airport City is proposed to be developed on a total area of over 350 hectares. It integrates five different gates or clusters, notably the Free Zone Gate, covering an area of 152 hectares, followed by the Business Gate (114 hectares), Aviation Gate (53 hectares), Logistics Gate (24 hectares), and Hospitality Gate (12 hectares).
A similar ambitious-scale Airport City is also planned at Salalah International Airport which, much like the Muscat version, will seek to harness state-of-the-art passenger terminal and air-cargo infrastructure to support investments in logistics, cargo storage, light manufacturing, processing, hospitality and ecommerce.
In a presentation made by Oman Airports late last year, officials noted that the objective of the Logistics Gate project is to drive the growth of air logistics as a new economic industry in the Sultanate.
An anchor tenant already roped in by Oman Airports to invest in the Logistics Gate is global logistics giant DHL. Under an agreement reached with Oman Airports last September, DHL has committed to setting up a 50,000 sq metre capacity storage facility within the Logistics Gate – an investment that promises to position Oman as a regional hub for its airfreight business in the future.
Oman’s National Aviation Strategy 2030 seeks to boost air cargo throughput in the Sultanate to 730,000 tonnes by 2030 — a goal designed to also harness opportunities for, among other things, employment generation, economic diversification, and SME development.
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