Five shore cranes stand ready over the Strait of Gibraltar as a tug tows a huge block of cement out to sea to take its place in the construction of a new port. To the north, distant passenger boats and the jutting shoreline of southern Spain appear through the haze.
The scene is calm for now but it is here in the northern tip of Morocco that the African state is investing much of its hopes to boost industry, create more than 100,000 jobs and diversify an economy overly dependent on the ups and downs of rain-fed agriculture.
After years of discussion, the country is finally putting in place the infrastructure to take advantage of its proximity to Europe with a port complex 40km east of Tangier, including associated logistics and industrial zones. The plan, known as the Tangier Med project, was launched in 2002 but is now gathering momentum. The first of the new port’s terminals opened last July and a second is scheduled to begin operating this summer, giving it a capacity of 3.5m 20ft container equivalents (teu) per year.
The concept is to use the port’s location – just 14km from Spain at the shortest distance between Africa and Europe – to attract shipping traffic that flows between east and west, passing through the Strait of Gibraltar. By leveraging off the port, the hope is to turn the region into a transit and logistics hub; a zone designed to attract international manufacturers to build and export, where goods moving between Asia, Europe and the US can be packed or assembled
It is one of the largest and most ambitious projects launched in the country with the ultimate goal of bringing development to Morocco’s northern region. This is an area of high unemployment that has been neglected since colonial days. Rather than industry, it has garnered a reputation for smuggling, the drugs trade and the trafficking of illegal immigrants.
Tangier contributes just 10 per cent of Morocco’s gross domestic product, in spite of its location on the doorstep of Europe, while Casablanca, on the Atlantic, contributes 35 per cent and handles about 90 per cent of the country’s shipping container traffic.
“Once you have the platform plugged into the territory, the territory has connectivity ... with the world,” says Said Elhadi, chairman of the Tangier Mediterranean Special Agency (TMSA), the government body overseeing the project.
TMSA can already claim one high-profile success. In September, Renault and Nissan announced a €600m (£449m, $880m) project to build a factory in Tangier Med’s industrial zone with the capacity to produce 200,000 cars a year from 2010, and eventually up to 400,000 a year.
The significance of the deal goes beyond the construction of a factory – it has put down a marker with which TMSA hopes to lure new business and build up the automotive industry, a priority sector for the authorities.
“We hear people talking about Morocco who didn’t in the past,” Mr Elhadi says. “It’s a flag that says, ‘Hey, here in Morocco we can do industry’.”
To back its plans, the government is investing about €2bn in the port, the zones and associated highways and railways, Mr Elhadi says.
A further €1.4bn – with about half from the government and the remainder from operators – will be spent on increasing the port’s capacity with an additional 5m teu. That project, Tangier Med II, was announced in April and TMSA is in negotiations with Maersk, CMA/CGM, and MSC – which are already involved in Tangier Med I – to operate a terminal dedicated to shipping lines.
It is hoped construction of Tangier Med II will begin at the end of this year, opening in 2012 and reaching full capacity in 2015. With an overall capacity of 8.5m teu, it would be the largest port in the Mediterranean, according to officials.
Yet much still needs to be done. Tangier, like other parts of the country, suffers from housing shortages and infrastructure problems, particularly with transport. Ensuring workers will be willing and able to migrate to the area will be crucial.
“At this moment Tan Med is below potential to attract as much trade as it would like and ensuring that its services are cost-effective and competitive,” said Jose Lopez Calix, lead economist for Morocco at the World Bank.
“The city of Tangier has many pressing challenges ahead, particularly in the areas of housing capacity and urban transportation. And labour scarcity, at all levels, is also an important issue to solve.”
Government officials acknowledge there are critical issues to be addressed but argue that roads and railways are being built to support the project, with a new urban centre planned near the investment zone and 200,000 housing units in Tangier.
