Dubai’s Roads and Transport Authority (RTA) has completed upgrades to a section of Al Marabea’ Street aimed at increasing road capacity and easing traffic congestion in Al Quoz.

The works included expanding a 1.1-kilometre section of Al Marabea ‘Street from the Al Khail Road exit to Al Asayel Street and addressing traffic bottlenecks.

The improvements increased the road’s capacity by 30 per cent and reduced journey times by up to 30 per cent during peak hours.

The project also included expanding an intersection by adding a new traffic lane for vehicles travelling from Al Marabea Street to Street 16A. The authority said the change reduced congestion and queue lengths by 50 per cent.

Modern lighting poles were also installed to improve visibility and traffic safety at night.

Key Al Quoz corridor

Al Marabea’ Street is a key corridor in Al Quoz, connecting Al Khail Road with Al Asayel Street and providing direct access to several industrial, commercial and residential areas.

The road also serves traffic travelling to and from Al Quoz, Al Meydan, Business Bay and Downtown Dubai, strengthening connections with Dubai’s main road network.

The improvements are part of RTA’s efforts to develop Dubai’s road infrastructure and introduce traffic measures in response to the emirate’s urban expansion and traffic growth.

Further upgrades on Al Marabea’ Street, due by end-August

RTA is carrying out further upgrades on Al Marabea’ Street, including the construction of a new service road with a continuous pedestrian walkway serving the neighbouring industrial area.

The works also include a new access point at the start of the Al Khail Road exit leading towards Al Marabea’ Street, aimed at improving access and enhancing road safety.

The additional upgrades are expected to be completed by the end of August 2026.

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Rajit Nanda does not describe DataVolt as a data centre company, at least not first. He describes it as an energy company that arrived at data centres from the other direction.

“We come from the world of energy and are gravitating towards the world of data centres,” says the CEO of the Saudi firm, now two and a half years old. “If you look into our name itself, it says it all: Data and Volt. Volt represents the energy part of it, and data represents the intelligence part of it.”

That lineage matters. DataVolt sits within Vision Invest, the Saudi industrial holding group that incubated ACWA Power, the listed water re-use firm Miahona, and Saudi Tabreed, its district cooling joint venture with the UAE’s Tabreed. The group also holds interests in cargo and logistics and in LNG, in partnership with US energy private equity firm EIG and Aramco.

By Nanda’s account, it has built around $120bn of greenfield infrastructure across energy, water and green hydrogen in roughly 15 countries over two decades.

DataVolt was the conclusion the group reached about what comes next.

“We all came together and realised that the future of the world is not just going to be energy and water from an infrastructure perspective, but it’s going to be the nexus of energy, water and intelligence. And what was underpinning intelligence was digital infrastructure.”

The company positions itself across what Nanda calls the AI infrastructure layer of the stack, energy, conventional data centres, and compute infrastructure. “If you add all of them together as one vertical plane, that’s what is essentially the AI infrastructure.”

Sold out before completion

The current build is deliberately modest by the group’s standards: around 60MW, split between Saudi Arabia and Uzbekistan, with 48MW across two Saudi sites and 12MW in Tashkent. All of it – in phases – is due to be operational by the end of the year.

Nanda calls these “our first initial baby steps” and “market validation sizes”, though he concedes the point when pressed on the roughly $1bn involved. “It’s not small. Let’s put it that way.”

More striking is the take-up. “As we speak, I’m very happy to share with you that all of our facilities are sold out,” he says. “We are just about a few megawatts of spare capacity out of the 60.”

He is also careful to distinguish the commercial model from the rest of the infrastructure world. Airports, independent power producers and desalination plants are, in his framing, business-to-government propositions with a single offtaker, usually a utility or a state concession. Data centres are not.

“Data centre business is slightly different. It is a B2B business, because your customers are enterprises or hyperscalers.”

Around 70 per cent of DataVolt’s Saudi capacity is being used for AI workloads, Nanda says, with the balance for cloud. In Uzbekistan the split is closer to even. The company is among the first operators in Central Asia and the GCC deploying liquid cooling at scale, which enables the high-density racks AI training requires.

Making a new asset class bankable

The development Nanda is keenest to discuss is not a building but a financing. DataVolt recently reached financial close on its Tashkent project with a syndicate of European development finance institutions, including the EBRD, France’s Proparco, Germany’s DEG and the OPEC Fund.

“Single asset project financing has not happened in the world of data centres,” he says. “This is one of the first ones that is happening at scale.”

The significance, he argues, is not the capital raised but the precedent set. Those institutions had to work through the risk allocation required to lend against a data centre as a standalone asset, the kind of structuring long established in power and water, and largely absent in digital infrastructure.

“This financing is not a milestone for DataVolt. This financing is a milestone for the industry,” he says. “Whatever we do, we always realise that to be successful, you cannot be successful alone. You have to make the industry succeed. If the industry succeeds, by default, you will succeed.”

Green power, and a cooperative grid

The Tashkent facility runs on renewable power around the clock, an arrangement Nanda says was reached with the grid rather than around it.

“Our data centre, without any cost burden, is green. We have worked very closely with the grid in order to create a mechanism through which we are using some of the renewable plants in the grid, directly attached to our data centre and able to generate 24 by 7 green power. It’s a play of wind and solar. The solar runs during the daytime and the wind runs during the night.”

Grid readiness is one of the sector’s most persistent bottlenecks, particularly in emerging markets. Nanda says Uzbekistan proved an exception.

“We haven’t encountered any such challenge, to be very honest. We have found the regulatory regime and both the political will to be extremely supportive, friendly and progressive. A lot of what we have been able to do is because our creativity has been reciprocated.”

The contrast, he suggests, is with markets where unconventional proposals die in process. “The issue in many of the countries is when you go with no cookie-cutter ideas, but with creative ideas, it just burns you out. It takes so much time to deal with the bureaucracy.”

The geo-economics argument

The larger thesis concerns Saudi Arabia, and it rests on three legs.

The first is energy. Nanda points to utility-scale green power produced in the kingdom at around two cents per kilowatt hour, a figure he claims is 30 to 40 per cent below Chinese equivalents. “And we know that China is legendary in the world for producing everything cheap.”

The second is connectivity. “Saudi has over the last nine, ten years invested heavily in terms of connectivity on the subsea cables. Today, 17 subsea cables land in the kingdom, and in the next two years those 17 are becoming 24.” Combined with terrestrial fibre, he argues, this is what makes compute exportable rather than merely local.

And local demand, he is blunt, is beside the point. Saudi capacity today sits at roughly 300MW and is expected to reach around 800MW by 2030 or 2031. “That’s not what is moving the needle for us. We are doing these AI factories to be the factories of the world, the compute factories of the world.”

The third leg is the one he thinks the market overlooks entirely.

“We hear about geopolitics, but no one talks about the geo-economics,” he says. “What I mean is the country’s strategic location vis-à-vis the world’s population.”

From Saudi Arabia, he argues, roughly half the world’s population sits inside a 120-millisecond latency envelope: 1.4 billion people in Africa directly across the Red Sea, around two billion across South and Southeast Asia, 450 million in Europe, and a further 350 million reachable via Europe to the US.

“So, wherever you need compute power which can be done within those 120 milliseconds of latency, that is your addressable market. And that’s half the world.”

The ambition follows from the arithmetic. “Just as much as the kingdom is today one of the world’s largest exporters of oil, in the next eight, ten years we want the kingdom to be one of the largest exporters of compute.”

The vehicle for that is the campus at NEOM’s Oxagon, which DataVolt is developing at 1.5GW. Nanda expects to break ground within roughly 12 weeks, with a first phase of a couple of hundred megawatts.

Talent before concrete

Asked about localisation, Nanda’s answer is unusually emphatic.

“We believe that infrastructure development, especially critical and strategic infrastructure like data centres, without talent development is a battle that is dead on arrival.”

DataVolt began training before it began building. “One of the first things that we did after the formation of this company is we did not invest in hard infrastructure,” he says. Working through the Energy & Water Academy, a vocational institute the group had already used for its power business, DataVolt began putting young Saudis through a three-year programme, equivalent to an undergraduate degree, to qualify as certified data centre operators, with an even split between men and women.

The same model is running in Uzbekistan, where the company has committed that all data centre operators will be Uzbek nationals by 2029.

Demand for the places has outstripped anything the company modelled. For a data science and AI diploma launched about six weeks before the interview, DataVolt offered 100 seats and expected around 400 applications. Applicants had to hold an undergraduate degree and come from outside the kingdom’s major cities.

“By day four, we closed the applications. We had 16,500 applications for 100 seats.”

What keeps him up

Nanda divides risk into the controllable and the uncontrollable. Talent, he argues, belongs firmly in the first category. “If you invest in it, you can control it. The problem is that most business leaders run after the business and later find out that, oh, I forgot about the talent that needs to run this.”

The uncontrollable one is silicon.

“The only thing around which, from time to time, we have challenges in our mind, because of the geopolitics, is the access of the data centres to what we call the chips. Access to chips is not a slam dunk. It’s not a commodity that you can just go to the internet and order on one of these e-commerce platforms. It’s a highly regulated and controlled element.”

For now, he says, the kingdom’s relationship with the US, where the advanced GPUs are made, works in its favour.

That uncertainty is, in his telling, the defining condition of the industry. Unlike other sectors, he argues, the pace is set not only by technology but by geopolitics, and both are moving at once.

“I go to bed thinking the world is in a particular shape every night, but when I wake up in the morning, I think I am born to another planet. That is the pace at which this industry is moving.”

Ask him what makes it worth it and the answer returns to the cohorts, not the campuses.

“When I meet these young boys and girls between the ages of 18 and 22, and I see the energy in them, the hunger in them, how they want to conquer the world on the back of artificial intelligence, how they want to contribute to the digital revolution. When you provide the means and tools to them, there is nothing more satisfying in your life.”

On May 15, H.H Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice-President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, inaugurated the world’s tallest, largest and smartest net-positive government building.

Shaped like a sail in Al Jaddaf district, Al Shera’a, the Arabic word for sail, rises 19 storeys above Dubai Creek and, over the course of a year, will generate more clean energy than it consumes.

It is the new headquarters of Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (DEWA), designed as a physical statement of the emirate’s approach to infrastructure: ambitious, technology-led and measured by outcomes.

H.H Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum was received by H.E Saeed Mohammed Al Tayer, MD and CEO of DEWA, who briefed His Highness on the advanced cognitive system that distinguishes the building and makes it the smartest government building in the world. The system relies on Internet of Things technologies, big data analytics and artificial intelligence (AI).

Al Shera’a is equipped with an integrated cognitive system connecting all operational systems and supported by more than 110,000 smart sensors that monitor environmental and operational data in real time, over 1,500 wireless access points and more than 3,200 network devices to achieve perfect synchronisation.

These generate more than 1.9 million automated control commands daily, enhancing operational integration and improving performance efficiency.

“Every achievement should be viewed as a launchpad for new phases of excellence and innovation,” H.H Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum said at the opening, reinforcing that principle. Al Tayer has spent three decades treating it exactly that way.

Leading from the front

Al Tayer has led DEWA since its establishment in 1992. In that time, the utility has been transformed into one of the world’s most closely benchmarked energy and water providers, ranking first globally across 13 key performance indicators and two regional benchmarks covering generation, transmission, distribution and customer service. His remit extends well beyond the utility itself.

He sits on the Dubai Executive Council, the Dubai Supreme Fiscal Committee and the Dubai Council. Al Tayer is also vice chairman of the Dubai Supreme Council of Energy and chairs or holds leadership positions across several of Dubai’s major industrial and infrastructure companies, including ENOC, Dragon Oil, Emirates Global Aluminium and EMPOWER. In 2025, that career drew an unusual salute.

Al Tayer became the first civilian recipient of the Life of Leadership Excellence Award from Britain’s Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, an institution more accustomed to recognising military leadership.

The recognition reflected a philosophy that has defined his tenure: execution as strategy. Q1 2026 continued that momentum, delivering DEWA’s highest-ever first-quarter revenue, operating profit, EBITDA and profit after tax. Revenue reached $1.76bn, while operating profit increased 53.6 per cent and profit after tax rose 89.9 per cent year on year. Cumulative investment in Dubai’s energy and water infrastructure has now exceeded $74bn, while customer accounts have increased to about 1.35 million.

What separates DEWA from many state utilities is that it does not behave like one. It reports with the discipline of a listed multinational — it has been listed on the Dubai Financial Market since April 2022.

In 2025, it delivered the type of financial performance expected from a global infrastructure company: record revenue, record profit and continued investment capacity.

DEWA reported record full-year results, with revenue reaching $8.94bn, EBITDA at $4.72bn and profit after tax at $2.47bn. Its performance was supported by record operational demand, with annual electricity generation reaching 62.21 TWh, including 10.10 TWh of clean power generation.

Peak power demand reached 11.39 GW, while total desalinated water produced stood at 161.5 billion imperial gallons. DEWA’s installed power capacity reached around 18 GW, while its installed desalination capacity climbed to 555 million imperial gallons per day, reflecting continued investment in Dubai’s expanding infrastructure needs.

Al Tayer’s description of what those numbers provide is “strategic freedom”: the ability to continue investing at scale while maintaining financial strength.

Profit, in that view, is not the objective. It is the mechanism that enables long-term investment while also supporting returns to shareholders through dividends. This approach has shaped everything from renewable energy expansion to digital transformation and now the authority’s most ambitious step yet: taking the DEWA model beyond Dubai.

Championing solar energy

If the balance sheet is the proof, solar is the conviction DEWA backed long before the economics were obvious. The Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Park, the largest single-site solar park in the world and holder of multiple Guinness World Records, began as a long-term commitment to a technology whose commercial case was still developing.

DEWA structured the project through the independent power producer (IPP) model, attracting international developers and investors while helping establish some of the lowest solar tariffs globally.

DEWA has increased the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Park’s planned capacity for 2030 to 8,060 megawatts, well above the original target of 5,000 MW. This raises Dubai’s expected clean energy contribution to 36 per cent, up from the initial goal of 25 per cent, while increasing annual carbon emissions reductions to more than 8.5 million tonnes, surpassing the original target of 6.5 million tonnes and reinforcing the emirate’s commitment to achieve net zero by 2050.

In 2025, DEWA completed 1,000 MW of the solar park’s 1,800 MW sixth phase and achieved further global milestones, including the world’s tallest concentrated solar power tower at 263 metres and the largest thermal energy storage capacity of its kind, capable of storing 5,907 MWh. “We moved early into solar energy. Now we are taking this model globally,” Al Tayer has said. That approach has defined DEWA’s wider sustainability strategy: invest early, build scale and create systems that can be replicated. Alongside solar, DEWA is expanding other clean-energy technologies.

The Hatta Pumped-storage Hydroelectric Power Plant, the first of its kind in the GCC, will provide 250 MW of generation capacity and 1,500 MWh of energy storage. In water, the authority is shifting towards more efficient reverse-osmosis desalination technologies, reducing reliance on traditional thermal processes. By 2030, DEWA is planning to have 100 per cent of its desalinated water using waste heat and clean energy.

Reliability as a product

Behind these headline projects sits an operating record that has become one of DEWA’s strongest differentiators. Under H.H Sheikh Mohammed’s Dubai-It initiative, built around the principle that ambition must translate into measurable execution, DEWA has continued to set global benchmarks for operational performance, efficiency and service excellence.

The numbers explain why. Customer minutes lost, a core measure of electricity reliability, has fallen to 0.82 minutes per customer annually, equivalent to just 49 seconds, the world’s lowest. Electricity network losses stand at 2 per cent, compared with significantly higher levels in many developed markets, and it’s also the world’s lowest, while water-network losses have fallen to 4.4 per cent, among the world’s lowest. Dubai’s electricity system reliability exceeds 99.99 per cent. Increasingly, those gains are being driven by digital systems and artificial intelligence.

DEWA’s Automatic Smart Grid Restoration System can identify faults, isolate affected sections and restore electricity supply automatically. Its intelligent gas turbine controller at the Jebel Ali Power Station operates autonomously, while Rammas, DEWA’s AI-powered virtual employee, has handled more than 13 million customer queries since its launch in 2017.

The authority is backing this digital transformation through its Dhs7bn Smart Grid Strategy, which runs until 2035 and includes 19 enablers designed to improve efficiency, reduce losses and support renewable energy integration.

For Al Tayer, technology is not simply about automation. It is about creating a utility capable of anticipating demand, improving reliability and operating at greater scale.

Boosting the value chain

Growth at DEWA has not only been about building more infrastructure. It has also been about controlling more of the ecosystem around it. The authority has expanded its ownership position in strategic assets, including raising its stake in Emirates Central Cooling Systems Corporation (EMPOWER), the world’s largest district cooling provider by connected capacity, from 56 per cent to 80 per cent in a transaction valued at $1.41bn.

The move reflects a broader strategy: secure control of assets that are central to Dubai’s future energy and sustainability needs. Today, DEWA oversees a portfolio of more than 10 successful operating companies and occupies multiple roles across the infrastructure value chain: planner, developer, financier, offtaker and shareholder. That integrated model is now the foundation for its international ambitions.

A new chapter: DEWA International

The next chapter began in June, when H.H Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed Al Maktoum, Chairman of the Dubai Supreme Council of Energy, launched DEWA International, a wholly owned independent subsidiary created to develop conventional and clean energy and water projects globally.
The move marks a significant shift in DEWA’s role.

After spending more than three decades building Dubai’s infrastructure ecosystem, the authority is now positioning itself as a developer and partner beyond the emirate. For Al Tayer, the expansion is not about exporting individual projects. It is about exporting the systems, experience and operating model behind them.

“International expansion is not merely an ambition; it is a strategic imperative that strengthens DEWA across every dimension,” Al Tayer said. The approach will be measured and phased, beginning with markets where Dubai’s relationships, experience and geographic position provide a natural advantage before expanding further.

The proposition is built around capabilities developed in Dubai: project structuring, governance, risk allocation, digital transformation, operations and maintenance, and the ability to attract global investment through bankable infrastructure models.

A key part of that experience comes from DEWA’s independent water and power producer model, which has helped the authority attract international developers and investors while delivering competitive tariffs. “We are exporting not only projects, but our full set of learnings and capabilities,” Al Tayer said.

The company will focus on co-development and co-investment opportunities with governments, developers and financial institutions, bringing together Dubai’s infrastructure expertise with international partnerships.

“The company is set up. The work has already started,” Al Tayer said, pointing to the development of project pipelines and partnerships that will shape DEWA International’s future. For a utility that spent three decades proving its model at home, the next challenge is whether that model can work elsewhere.

Exporting a utility model

The creation of DEWA International represents more than an expansion strategy. It is a test of whether an operating model developed for one of the world’s fastest-growing cities can be adapted across different markets.

DEWA states that its advantage does not come from owning infrastructure alone. It comes from the system built around it: long-term planning, financial discipline, technology adoption and the ability to bring together governments, investors and private-sector partners. Through its independent power producer and independent water producer models, DEWA has developed experience in structuring large-scale infrastructure projects that attract international capital while maintaining competitive costs.

The authority’s role has evolved from being solely a utility provider into a broader infrastructure platform, combining planning, development, financing, procurement, operations and investment. That combination is what DEWA International intends to take abroad.

The subsidiary will focus on opportunities across electricity generation, renewable energy, water production and related infrastructure, working alongside governments, developers and investors. Al Tayer has stressed that international growth will be disciplined rather than driven by expansion for its own sake.
The strategy is to enter markets where DEWA’s experience, relationships and capabilities can create value, then build partnerships that allow projects to scale sustainably. The broader ambition reflects a changing global infrastructure landscape. Countries are looking for solutions that address rising electricity demand, water security, decarbonisation and the need for resilient urban systems.

Dubai’s experience offers a case study: a city that has expanded rapidly while maintaining high reliability, attracting investment and increasing the role of clean energy. Whether that model can travel will depend on how effectively it adapts to different regulatory environments, markets and infrastructure needs.

But DEWA believes the foundations are already proven. Success will ultimately depend not only on exporting technical expertise, but on adapting the DEWA model to meet the unique demands of markets around the world.

A bright strategy

It is easy to view DEWA’s recent milestones separately: record financial results, renewable energy expansion, a landmark headquarters and the launch of an international subsidiary. Al Tayer sees them as part of a single strategy.

The utility has spent more than three decades building operational strength, financial resilience and technological capability. Those foundations now underpin its next phase: moving from being a benchmark utility to becoming a global infrastructure partner. Along the way, DEWA has continued to focus on less visible measures of institutional strength.

It became the first organisation globally to receive Investors in People Platinum accreditation, reflecting its approach to workforce development and organisational culture. It has also achieved high scores through Dubai Government’s real-time happiness measurement system, reflecting its focus on customer experience.

The challenge ahead is different from the one DEWA faced when it began. Building power plants, desalination facilities and networks requires engineering expertise. Exporting an operating philosophy requires something harder: adapting culture, governance and decision-making processes across different markets.

That is the test facing DEWA International. The opportunity, however, is clear. As countries seek reliable, sustainable and investable infrastructure solutions, DEWA believes the experience built in Dubai can offer a blueprint.

As Al Tayer said, DEWA International “is the next chapter in this journey”.

Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) reported that its revenue rose 9 per cent in 2025 to $120bn, while net profit more than doubled to $17bn as stronger contributions from maturing portfolio companies boosted results.

The sovereign wealth fund retained more than $900bn in assets under management and reported an annualised total shareholder return of 5.8 per cent since 2017, according to its 2025 annual report.

PIF said its 2025 shareholder return benefited from higher dividends from portfolio companies and gains from financial investments, although these were partly offset by lower valuations for some assets amid wider market conditions and continued long-term domestic investment.

The fund invested more than $199bn cumulatively in Saudi Arabia between 2021 and 2025 and said it contributed more than $342bn to the kingdom’s real non-oil gross domestic product over the same period.

PIF’s contribution to the GDP

PIF accounted for 11 per cent of Saudi Arabia’s total non-oil GDP in 2025, it said.

“Throughout 2025, PIF continued to drive Saudi Arabia’s economic development and diversification through long-term investments and the launch of strategic companies,” Maram Aljohani, chief of staff and secretary general to the board at PIF, said.

“PIF contributed 11 per cent of Saudi Arabia’s total non-oil GDP in 2025 and contributed more than $342bn cumulatively from 2021-2025.”

International investments grew 12 per cent in 2025 as PIF expanded its overseas presence, including through new subsidiary company offices in Paris, Beijing and Shanghai, adding to existing locations in London, New York and Hong Kong.

The fund also launched companies, including artificial intelligence venture HUMAIN and Expo 2030 Riyadh Company during the year.

It signed agreements with Goldman Sachs Asset Management, Macquarie Asset Management and Italian export credit agency SACE as part of efforts to mobilise capital and attract investment into Saudi Arabia.

“Building on a sustained period of growth and disciplined investment, 2025 marked another defining year for PIF,” said Yasir Alsalman, CFO and acting head of Global Capital Finance Division at PIF.

“In 2025, PIF more than doubled net profit year on year and maintained its strong financial position with over $900bn in assets under management.”
PIF also issued its first euro-denominated green bond and established a commercial paper programme during 2025.

Stable outlook

It maintained long-term ratings of Aa3 with a stable outlook from Moody’s and A+ with a stable outlook from Fitch, while securing an inaugural A-1 short-term rating from S&P.

The fund said it launched 100 new digital applications and activated 43 high-impact AI-enabled solutions during the year as it expanded the use of data, analytics and artificial intelligence across its operations.

The results marked the final year of PIF’s 2021-2025 strategy. Its 2026-2030 strategy will focus on six interconnected domestic ecosystems, alongside international investments in areas including artificial intelligence, the energy transition, advanced manufacturing, and sports and entertainment.

AD Ports Group reported an 88 per cent increase in second-quarter net profit to Dhs836m, as stronger maritime, logistics and economic zone operations helped offset disruption caused by the crisis around the Strait of Hormuz.

Revenue for the three months rose 47 per cent from a year earlier to Dhs7.08bn, while earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation increased 49 per cent to Dhs1.74bn, the Abu Dhabi-listed company said.

Its EBITDA margin widened to 24.5 per cent from 24.2 per cent a year earlier.

The results included proceeds from the sale of a warehouse by the group’s Economic Cities and Free Zones business. The transaction contributed Dhs650m to revenue and Dhs294m to EBITDA during the quarter.

“AD Ports Group delivered a record financial performance in Q2 despite operating through perhaps the most significant challenge in its 20-year history,” managing director and group CEO Captain Mohamed Juma Al Shamisi said.

The company said it had expanded alternative sea, land and air routes under the UAE’s National Programme to Strengthen Supply Chain Resilience after traffic through the Strait of Hormuz was disrupted.

Measures included rerouting cargo and feeder services through Fujairah Terminals and Khor Fakkan Port, deploying 400 additional trucks, increasing rail services with Etihad Rail and chartering six aircraft for critical commodities such as food and pharmaceuticals.

A fleet of 27 container vessels and five bulk ships operated along alternative corridors connecting ports in India, Pakistan, Oman, the Red Sea and the upper Arabian Gulf. The group also expanded dedicated warehousing and storage capacity to more than 54,000 square metres.

Revenue from the Maritime and Shipping business, which accounted for 53 per cent of group revenue, climbed 62 per cent to Dhs3.82bn. Its EBITDA increased 79 per cent to Dhs1.03bn.

Container feeder volumes fell 11 per cent year on year to 740,000 twenty-foot equivalent units, but the decline was more than offset by higher shipping rates.

Average rates on Gulf and Indian subcontinent services jumped 96 per cent, while Red Sea rates increased 37 per cent.

Economic Cities and Free Zones revenue more than doubled to Dhs1.29bn, although growth was 15 per cent after excluding the warehouse sale. The division’s EBITDA doubled to Dhs659m.

Logistics revenue increased 30 per cent to Dhs1.47bn, with EBITDA rising 154 per cent to Dhs94m.

Ports business hit, says AD Ports Group

The Ports business was hit more directly by the regional disruption. UAE container throughput dropped 65 per cent to 573,000 TEUs, while bulk and general cargo volumes declined 67 per cent to 3.1m tonnes.

Ports revenue fell 17 per cent to Dhs609m and EBITDA declined 23 per cent to Dhs234m.

Operating cash flow rose 88 per cent to Dhs2.14bn. Free cash flow to the firm was negative Dhs1.03bn after including the Dhs1.1bn acquisition of an additional 30 per cent stake in Global Feeder Shipping. Excluding that transaction, free cash flow was positive at Dhs73m.

The acquisition, completed on June 23, increased AD Ports’ stake in Global Feeder Shipping to 81 per cent.

Net debt rose by Dhs1.27bn during the quarter to Dhs22.73bn, although the company’s net debt-to-EBITDA ratio improved to 3.7 times from 3.9 times at the end of the first quarter.

AD Ports also announced during the quarter the Dhs3.1bn acquisition of Brazilian agricultural bulk terminal operator Corredor Logística e Infraestrutura and the Dhs300m purchase of Germany-based MBS Logistics. The transactions are expected to close in the third and fourth quarters, respectively.

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