Shore investment

The marine facilities are an essential part of the free zone, offering access to industrial services for the oil industry.

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Kick-starting an economy isn’t something that can be achieved overnight. Even with the best planning, support from the government and dedicated contractors on board, infrastructure changes take years to complete.

Attracting the necessary long-term investors, business partners and new ventures takes a considerable amount of time.

So, the fact that the Hamriyah Free Zone Authority in Sharjah has been able to complete five major projects within the past two years, on time and within budget, is nothing short of sensational.

The feat is even more impressive when you consider the free zone’s authority has managed to do that during two of the toughest financial years on record. At the same time the HFZA continued to aggressively market itself to suitable clients all around the region.

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“Sharjah has always had a reputation as a logistics centre for the oil and gas industry – a hub for the industry. While that’s important, it’s also important to look at other areas too,” said HFZA Director General Rashid Al Leem.

“Thanks to the government’s leadership, we’ve been able to expand that with the work we’vecarried out. We’re one of the fastest growing Free Zones in the UAE, and we’ve shown that we are able to sustain that through some very tough times,” he added.

Situated 20kms north-east of Sharjah city centre, the Hamriyah Free Zone was established by Emiri decree in November 1995 and centres around the Hamriyah Port (not to be confused with Dubai’s Al Hamriyah port) and its deep water harbour and shallower inner harbour.

The 14.5m deep-water harbour was developed in 2002-2005 by Halcrow to replace the original pontoon dock and now has a berth for LPG tankers and another for grain and general cargo ships. The grain berth also has a rail-mounted vacuvator, while specialist equipment can be brought in to cater for other cargo. There is one 3500hp tug-boat stationed at the port, and others are called in from Sharjah’s Port Khalid as required.

At a cost of AED 355 million, the inner harbour project was one of the biggest ever undertaken by the HFZA. It required the dredging of the existing main channel to a depth of nine metres and the excavation of more than five million cubic metres of sand, rock and soil, to create two basins, one five metres deep, and the other seven metres deep.

Halcrow was again appointed to complete the concept and preliminary designs, do budget preparation work for the project, and it then moved on to detailed design, tender documents and finally contract supervision.

“It was a very good project to be involved with,” said senior engineer Steve Hodgkins. “It  involved some fairly innovative ways of getting rid of the material. I think we raised the whole area out there by about a metre.”

It was also a major undertaking for Six Construct. The company started on the project in November 2007 and had to bring in specialist dredging equipment to deepen the existing inner harbour. Excavators worked for months to carve out the new bays, while crane barges were used to position the 10,012 quay blocks.