Iraq Prepares Tender for Additional Berths at Al-Faw Grand Port
Shipping Arabia, July 12, 2026 – Iraq is preparing to launch an international tender for the construction of additional berths and facilities at Al-Faw Grand Port in Basra province following the completion of major elements of the project’s first phase.
The Ministry of Transport has invited international maritime infrastructure companies to participate in the next stage of development, which will expand the port beyond the five berths already completed by South Korea’s Daewoo Engineering & Construction under a $2.5 billion contract.
The first phase includes five container berths, a 62-kilometer road linking Al-Faw with the port city of Umm Qasr, an immersed tunnel, a navigation channel and a container yard.
The immersed tunnel consists of 10 sections with a combined length of 2,444 meters, including about 1,226 meters beneath the water.
Located on the Khor Abdullah waterway near the mouth of the Shatt Al-Arab, the five completed berths are designed to accommodate container ships with capacities of up to 23,000 twenty-foot equivalent units.
The first phase is expected to provide annual handling capacity of about 4 million TEUs. Iraq’s longer-term development plan calls for Al-Faw Grand Port to reach 100 berths and annual capacity of 7.5 million TEUs by 2038.
The port forms a central component of Iraq’s Development Road initiative, a planned multimodal trade corridor connecting Basra with Turkey and onward markets in Europe through road and rail infrastructure.
The wider logistics project is intended to strengthen Iraq’s role in regional transit trade, improve links between Gulf shipping routes and European markets, and support the development of Basra as a major maritime and logistics gateway.
Further expansion of the port’s berth capacity will be critical to converting the completed infrastructure into an operational regional hub capable of attracting mainline container services and supporting the planned overland corridor.
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