Page 267 - Aamir Rehman - Dubai & Co Global Strategies for Doing Business in the Gulf States-McGraw-Hill (2007)

Getting Things Done: Operations Strategy and the GCC 249

recognize the seeds of Dubai’s development in a far earlier policy
decision: the initiative, launched by the late Sheikh Rashid in 1969,
to create a deep-water harbor in order to pursue his vision of mak-
ing Dubai a competitive shipping location. The goal
of the project was to attract leading shipping companies from
around the world to Dubai, which was a natural transition point
between East and West. The massive Jebel Ali port was built 10 years
later, and ever since Dubai has been at the heart of shipping in the
Gulf. By 1995, there were 930 companies from 72 countries operat-
ing in the Jebel Ali Free Zone, including Sony, Samsung, General
Motors, Heinz, and IBM. By 2004, it was among the top 10 busiest
ports in the world. 10
Compared with other leading ports of the world, Dubai has
several advantages. One is its location at the crossroads of Europe,
Asia, and Africa. Dubai is, for example, about equidistant between
London and Hong Kong—a perfect place for goods from China to
be stored, inventoried, and distributed to Europe. Jebel Ali’s status
as the world’s largest man-made harbor and the vast scale of its
facilities allow for huge amounts of general and temperature-con-
trolled storage, available for short- or long-term rental. Jebel Ali has
also been a leader in applying state-of-the-art technology, including
systems that enable the visual tracking of containers and loading
and discharging within minutes. The systems can even load and
discharge a ship at the same time, getting it on its way much faster
11
than other ports can do. This is like having departing passengers
board an airplane from one side while arriving passengers are
still exiting from the other side. Imagine how much more efficient
airlines would be if they could attain the same capability.
Growth in Dubai’s shipping throughput has been both phe-
nomenal and sustained. Between 2001 and 2005, Dubai’s port
throughput more than doubled. Figure 9.2 shows the growth in
Dubai’s throughput compared with that of Singapore (the world’s
largest throughput port in 2005) and Los Angeles (the largest
throughput port in the United States).
Dubai’s annual growth rate has been twice that of Singapore
and Los Angeles. This difference in growth rates has allowed
Dubai to overtake Los Angeles in the throughput rankings:
in 2001, Los Angeles’ throughput was over 60 percent higher than
Dubai’s; by 2005 Dubai had slightly more throughput than LA.