Eilat Port: Upcoming Meeting to Discuss License Extension Terms

PORT2PORT has been informed that last night, close to midnight, a letter was received by the management of Eilat Port from the Directors-General of the Ministry of Finance and Transportation. The letter stated that the parties should meet soon to discuss the extension of the authorization letter. The letter also stated that Eilat Port Company is aware that it did not meet the conditions of the authorization letter for unloading containers.

It should be noted that the Ministries of Finance and Transportation had to decide by the 31st of the month whether to extend the license of the Nakash brothers to operate Eilat Port for an additional 10 years. The Nakash brothers, who operate Eilat Port through Papo Shipping Company and hold the license until 2028, have already transferred a deposit of 105 million shekels in order to get the extension, but this week they received a letter from the Ministry of Transportation claiming that they did not meet the license conditions. One of the conditions in the authorization letter is that Eilat Port must unload an average of about 65,000 TEU containers per year. It should be noted that since Zim Company ceased its operations at Eilat Port in 2017, no containers have been unloaded at Eilat Port at all.

The letter received earlier this week claimed that the port did not meet one of the conditions for automatic extension of the license, which is unloading containers at the port at an average volume of 65,000 TEU in the years 2022 to 2024. "The clause was not fulfilled as written and therefore it cannot be confirmed that the company met all the conditions set in the clause for the extension of the authorization period", was written in the letter signed by the Directors-General of the Ministry of Finance and Transportation.

Eilat Port indeed responded to this letter and stated that "the demand to bring containers to Eilat Port is detached from reality" (see link), and that it is not economical for both importers and exporters.