Khor Al-Zubair - Iraq's gateway to the world

Khor Al-Zubair Free Zone has been allocated on a 5.000.000 sqm piece of land adjacent to the Khor Al-Zubair Port in the South of Iraq. The KAZ Port has direct access to the Arabian Gulf and is one of the important entry points for goods to Iraq. Khor Al-Zubair is located between Umm Qasr and Basrah in close distance to the Kuwaiti border.

The KAZ-PFZ area is connected to the Basrah-Baghdad highway, passing Nassiriyah, Diwaniyah, Nadjaf, Hillah and Kerbala.

The KAZ port offers easy shipping of goods to the Free Zone for further storage, processing or transit. The KAZ Private Free Zone shall also operate a warehouse facility at the Basrah International Airport being away only 50 Km.

Free Zone, KAZ Port and Airport Warehouse are combined under the same customs regime enabling fast movement of goods between the facilities. KAZ Private Free Zone provides also the advantage of being integrated into the network of the Iraqi railway system.

Basrah as the second largest city of Iraq offers enough labor for investors intending to establish a industrial production facility. Iraq traditionally owns a well educated labor force satisfying ambitious demands.

KAZ Port

Khor al-Zubair is one of three tanker terminals in the south. Apart from LPG imports and refined products, Khor al-Zubair handles with its 600 employees mainly dry goods, but it will be fitted with crude loading capabilities as well.

Khor al-Zubair terminal used to handle the country’s LPG exports which amounted to 4 million tons per year in 1990. Sabotage of pipelines and installations has now turned Iraq into a net importer. Iraq has the world’s tenth largest reserves of natural gas and is the world’s second largest in crude oil reserves.

Currently the Rebuild Iraq Recruiting Program (RIRP) together with the Hamburg Port Training Institute examines at the moment the establishment of a training program for the training of harbor staff. The Train-The Trainer program is tailored to managerial as well as blue-collar staff with the goal of improving the efficiency of the port operations. The training modules are developed and funding of the first phase is currently being established through German government donation.