Tangier- King Mohammed VI, accompanied by Prince Moulay Rachid and French President François Hollande, visited, on Sunday at the Al Fahs-Anjra province (Tangiers-Tetouan-Al Hoceima region), the Tangiers-Med port complex, a platform promoting Morocco's status as a hub for exchanges between Europe and Africa, the Mediterranean and the Atlantic.
Tangier- King Mohammed VI, accompanied by Prince Moulay Rachid and French President François Hollande, visited, on Sunday at the Al Fahs-Anjra province (Tangiers-Tetouan-Al Hoceima region), the Tangiers-Med port complex, a platform promoting Morocco’s status as a hub for exchanges between Europe and Africa, the Mediterranean and the Atlantic.
At their arrival at the Tangiers-Med port complex aboard the royal train, the King and the French president reviewed a detachment of the Royal Guard which paid the honors, and were greeted mainly by equipment, transportation and logistics minister Aziz Rebbah, the wali of the Tangiers-Tetouan region, and the governor of the Al Fahs-Anjra province.
The Tangiers-Med port complex, whose construction works were launched by the sovereign in 2003, is aimed at developing a high-performance and integrated port platform for complementary activities of transshipment, importation-exportation, and strong value-added logistics.
This is an integrated program (70 billion MAD), carried out as part of a public-private partnership and comprising the Tangiers-Med port complex (1,000ha) and a 5,000-ha industrial platform, of which 1,200 are already developed (Tangiers free zone, Renault Tangiers-Med, Tangiers Automotive City, Tétouan Park, Tétouan Shore).
Concerning the Tangiers-Med port complex, it is composed of Tangiers Med 1 port which includes two container terminals, a railway terminal, a hydrocarbon terminal, a merchandise terminal and a vehicle terminal, the Tangiers Med 2 port which includes two container terminals, the Tangiers Med Passengers port which includes access and border inspection zones, docks for passenger boarding and International Road Transportation, areas of regulation, the harbor station, a logistics free zone and a business center.
Operational since July 2007, this port complex succeeded in becoming a hub for global logistical flows on the East-West line, a crossing point of 20% of world’s trade and a bridge linking two continents separated by 14km: Europe and Africa.
Ranking 46th worldwide and fourth in the Mediterranean region, the port complex has the top capacity installed in the Mediterranean for the treatment of containers, with an overall capacity of 8.2 million containers at completion.
This port complex, which enabled Morocco to be among the top 20 globally for logistical connectivity (16th spot in the UNCTAD 2015 rankings), receives annually over 100,000 ships and 5 million passengers (7 million passengers at completion).
The development of the port complex also boosted the emergence of industrial, logistical and tertiary activity zones meant for international markets and the setting up at the hinterland of internationally-renown companies in the fields of car industry, textile, the paramedical sector, food processing, electronics and aeronautics.
After touring the different facilities and equipment of the Tangiers Med 1 Port, as well as the platform of the Tangiers Med 2 project, the King took his leave of the French president.