The Kingdom of Jordan signed an agreement with APM Terminals on Wednesday to upgrade the container terminal at its port in Aqaba on the Red Sea.

The Dutch company will invest $242m to increase the port’s capacity to 1.7 million boxes a year, compared with 1.3 million at present.

According to the Aqaba Development Corporation (ADC) the deal will also improve the port’s environmental performance, largely through electrification, with the aim of achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2040.

The agreement follows the announcement last week that the Jordanian government had approved a 15-year extension of APM’s concession, to 2046. Keith Svendsen, the chief executive of APM, said this marked “the next step of our ambitious future plans to upgrade the terminal”.

Hussein Al-Safadi, the chief executive of ADC, said Aqaba had set the target of becoming one of the leading ports in the region and “among the largest 40 ports in the world”.

Work on the extension will begin in the first quarter of next year and will be completed before 2031.

The collaboration between ADC and APM dates back to 2006 and has led to the expansion of the quay from 500m to 1,000 m, and an increase in annual capacity from 600,000 containers to 1.3 million.

Last year, an operations command centre was opened, which provides the port’s users with video feeds and a central location where they can deal with operational matters relating to vessels, yards and gate.

There was also a laser-based “truck alignment system”, allowing drivers to position their lorries underneath cranes quickly and accurately.

In 2023 Aqaba had a throughput of more than 898,000 containers, an increase of 5.4% on the previous year. ADC is projected annual revenues of around $2.5bn from the port.