The UAE's Khor Fakkan port handled 2.75 million 20-foot equivalent unit containers (TEUs) last year, an increase of 9.9 per cent over the previous year, a report said.

Khor Fakkan port is a key transshipment centre and only 25 per cent of containers handled there are bound for the local market, said The National newspaper report. The rest are transferred to smaller ships and delivered on to India and Pakistan, east Africa, Oman and ports lying within the Gulf including Abu Dhabi and Iran.

“In a very difficult year we were reasonably happy with the performance,” Keith Nuttall, the commercial manager of Gulftainer, the port operator, was quoted as saying.

The port has a maximum capacity of 4.5 million TEUs and Gulftainer is considering further expansions, Nuttall said.