DP World and Jebel Ali celebrated another milestone last month as Al Khaleej Sugar welcomed the arrival of MV UBC OTTAWA , the world’s largest sugar carrying vessel to call at DP World’s flagship Jebel Ali Port.
Arriving from Sao Paolo port in Brazil, 106,000 tonnes of sugar was discharged in Dubai during the whole last week. Sailing since 2011, the 260 meters length vessel has a load capacity of 118,625 tonnes.
At a ceremony held at the Al Khaleej Sugar refinery yard in Jebel Ali, in presence of Al Khaleej Sugar Managing Director Jamal Al Ghurair, DP World Chairman HE Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem congratulated the company.
“This historic call is another achievement for Dubai, reinforcing its gateway position for the Middle East and wider region,” bin Sulayem said.
Bin Sulayem attributed this success to the far sighted vision of His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, UAE Vice President, Prime Minister and Ruler of Dubai, for establishing Dubai and the wider UAE as a leading regional and international trade hub.
“DP World is working closely with Al Khaleej Sugar to safely offload the raw sugar at their berth, illustrating our ability to handle all types of cargo, including food staples such as rice, flour and other perishable goods,” bin Sulayem added.
“Jebel Ali serves a wide variety of customers and this event comes on the heels of the arrival of the biggest ever bulk carrier to visit the port last month, where we handled 79,000 tonnes of reinforcing steel. These achievements illustrate that we are ready to meet future demands for containerized or non-containerised cargo, with our new, state-of-the-art Container Terminal 3 at Jebel Ali ready to serve customers.”
Commenting on the event, Al Khaleej Sugar Managing Director Jamal Al Ghurair said his company is proud to host the biggest vessel in the world at the Al Khaleej Sugar berth in Dubai.
“In the last few years we have seen a number of improvements and additions to our refinery as we installed new equipment that helped increase production rates and placed us as one of the leading sugar refineries in the world. We appreciate the supportive role of the Dubai Government represented by His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, UAE Vice President, Prime Minister and Ruler of Dubai, and the constructive cooperation from Jebel Ali Port’s management in supporting our company’s success.”
Al Khaleej Sugar – literally meaning The Gulf Sugar – is the first sugar refinery in the Arabian Gulf Region and the largest standalone sugar refinery in the world.
Based in Jebel Ali in Dubai, the company has current production capacity of 7,000 tons of refined white sugar per day, employing about 800 personnel. Since the commencement of production in July, 1995 it has made remarkable progress to achieve the status of the largest standalone sugar refinery in the world, Which was achieved in July 2013 with a new set record of 7,270 tons of refined sugar in one day. In 2011, the refinery set another record in terms of highest ever-annual production of refined sugar at 1.5 million tons.
Its products are regularly exported to over 50 countries, including the regional countries in the Arabian Gulf Region. Currently, it contributes to about 3 per cent of global annual refined sugar production, and imports raw sugar from leading production areas like Brazil, India, Australia, Thailand etc.