King Fahd Industrial Port Yanbu, about 365 km north of Jeddah on Saudi Arabia's Red Sea coast, is best known as a key export point for the Kingdom's oil.

Soon, however, containers and general cargo may start to figure more prominently on the Port's agenda.

Exports of refined products, fuel oil, liquefied natural gas (LNG) and petrochemicals account for about 97 per cent of the total cargo throughput at King Fahd Industrial Port Yanbu.

Saudi Aramco's East/West crude oil pipeline, running 1,400 km from the country's Eastern Province to Yanbu, is a measure of the Port's role within Saudi Arabia's oil industry.

The pipeline has a capacity of five million barrels per day (bpd), about 2.5 times the total daily crude oil consumption of France, according to Saudi Aramco.

Oil products will remain Yanbu's staple cargo, but the Saudi Seaports Authority (Seapa) has said that growth in Yanbu's industrial hinterland is also likely to boost the Port's limited box cargo throughput.

''Up to now, container handling at this Port has been relatively limited because companies in the surrounding area have generally elected to ship their containerised cargoes through Jeddah, which is only four hours drive away,'' the authority said.

''However, the local industry around Yanbu is expecting an increase of 600,000 tonnes of polypropylene and other petrochemical products this year and these shipments will be largely containerised,'' it added.

For now, though, box cargo volumes remain negligible - barely 3,000 teu last year.

Seapa believes that the predicted growth in container volumes at Yanbu will entice carriers into serving the Port directly, particularly on regional feeder services linking Yanbu with other Red Sea ports including Aqaba, Suez, Port Sudan and Jeddah.