this is the alfor peninsula a tiny plot of land overlooking the Persian Gulf it might be small but it could soon become one of the most important stretches of land in the entire world you see it makes up the entirety of Iraq's Coastline and crucially despite its size gives this country uniquely positioned access to the ultra competitive Global shipping industry this mere 20 km stretch of water is at the he of a plan that could make Iraq one of the most valuable trading hub in the region let me explain this right here is the sews Canal for over 150 years it's dominated the global supply chain but overc capacity and the constant threat of piracy in the Red Sea has left experts in the shipping industry crying out for alternative Roots Iraq is hoping to answer those calls by creating A New Path right here which it argues would be quicker and safer than going via Suz but before Iraq can snatch the global supply chain Crown from Egypt it first has to build the biggest infrastructure project in its history starting with this The L4 Grand Port Engineers have had to build colossal structures with limited resources but when completed it'll be one of the biggest deep water ports on the planet and potentially the most game-changing construction project Iraq has ever built across the history of infrastructure there are a few select examples of projects that came along just at the right time and in the right place to make history enter Iraq now to say Iraq has a small coastline is a bit of an understatement the country's border is over 3,600 km and just 58 of those kilm are on the coast but it doesn't stop there because to get out to the open ocean it relies on this 20 km Wide Window but for the Iraqi authorities that could be a golden invitation to enter the big league of Global trait because it gives them an opportunity to build the Holy Grail of international Logistics a deep water Port this is what they're constructing at the center of the port are two huge container terminals these consist of an artificial Island which will act as the container yards while around the outside a Warf is being constructed allowing ships to dock the first phase of construction for the warf began in 2020 while the terminal Islands were constructed from reclaimed land the wars themselves are built out over the water Engineers drove 1,700 piles each 50 m long into the seabed using a technique known as a candy travel which basically works like this a few piles are initially driven into the seabird from the land and a deck is constructed on top from there a machine uses that platform to rest on as it drives piles in front of itself while the deck is completed behind it it's a lot more reliable than other methods like using a boat which can be affect Ed by the conditions on the sea the initial Warf was completed in 2024 and will host five births which will accommodate the first ships into this new Port now managing a project like the al4 Grands Port isn't just about 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streamline your financial management with ODU and keep your business sailing smoothly now before we get any further it's worth pausing for a second to really get a sense of the scale of the vehicles and quantity we're talking about here this is the Columbo Express it's an example of a neopanamax ship one of the largest categories of container ship on the Seas imagine taking the Chrysler Building laying on its side and then adding a propeller that's roughly the size of one of these ships without anything in it this meanwhile is a standard shipping container known in the trade as a teu it's the unit that the entire modern Logistics industry is based on and it can hold anything from bananas to iPhones a neopanamax ship can carry 15,000 of these things laid out flats that would cover half the Vatican now here's the thing the ports built to house these gigantic vessels not only need to be big but also incredibly strong to enable enormous container ships to navigate these small channels in a port most vessels are equipped with thrusters on their front and rear the largest container ships can carry up to 120,000 tons the CN Tower in Toronto only weighs 117,000 tons so the force they emit to nudge these vessels can be potentially devastating to any structure nearby that's known in the jargon as Port scow now typically this is countered by lining the side of the structures like Wares with rocks but that presented a big problem for Al 4 you see rocks are heavy and the area around L4 doesn't have enough quaries to meet the demand because of the sheer scale of the ports importing the amount of rock needed was pretty much out of the question so instead they turned to an ingenious technology what you're looking at here is a concrete mattress developed by proserve it's an Innovative solution to Port scow but it has its roots in a long-standing industry technique form work that works by creating a mold as for material like wood or metal which concrete is then poured into once the concrete is set the formwork is removed and the structure stays standing now the concrete mattress follows the same principle it starts with a fabric container which uses ties sewn in the intervals to keep its shape the mattress is laid in place and pumped full of concrete which when set provides the same level of protection against scour the technique has a number of advantages over traditional Rock armor not least of which being speed Rock armor is timec consuming to construct and has to be completed before the deck of a Warf is built but the concrete mattress can be installed at any point during construction and that's important because it means The Wider construction process is less reliant on Milestones being reached in a particular sequence basically it takes this activity off the critical path at L4 that was born out by the first Warf being completed ahead of schedule in just 37 months but the most important benefits is the enormous saving in materials this 1. 7 km stretch of Warf would have needed armor over 3. 5 M deep using up to 430,000 Cub M of rock enough to fill the Rotunda of the US capital 12 times over the concrete mattress on the other hand was only 20 cm thick in most places and used up just 26,500 Cub M of concrete now keeping the port structures intact is one thing but keeping the water deep enough in what is a dynamic marine environment is quite another the water immediately surrounding the alfor peninsula is fairly shallow you can see from this picture how far out the layer of mud comes into the port sight the water of the port is being dredged to a depth of 17 M including a turning Basin here and a channel 400 m wide and 24 km long leading out to sea that's a colossal amount of Earth to be extracted in total 142 million Cub M will be dredged from the site but the Marine conditions would soon see that fill back in alfor lies in a Delta where the shat alarab river meets the ocean the daily flow of the tide pulls sediment from the shat alarab across a vast area added to that occasional sandstorms in the nearby desert blow fine grains of sand out to sea which in turn gets washed back up in the same area to stop the dredge channels from simply filling up again a massive structure was needed so they built one this right here is the world's longest break water at 14.
5 km long it's so huge that it actually needs a secondary brake water to protect the entrance of the port from waves the Breakwater faced the same issue as the Wolves did with the lack of rock but instead of a Next Generation product the solution was just pure numbers over a 100,000 coock units were put into place over 5 years at a cost of $591 million while it might be huge the size of this enormous structure really emphasizes the extent of the sediments washing into the site from the nearby Delta Construction on this initial phase of the project is now nearing completion and the first ships are expected to dock Al 4 later this year but work on the project is going to continue for many more years to come as well as facilities to accommodate shipping containers births are being constructed to transport large unpackaged Goods known as dry bulk phase two is going to see the creation of industrial facilities like a steel mill and or Refinery and phase three will'll see the nearby town of al4 expanded with new housing mosques and a commercial center it's not entirely clear when the al4 port is going to be running at full capacity reports vary and the general company of ports of Iraq didn't respond to our request for comment but if true the estimates are staggering the port will open with five births capable of handling 3. 5 million shipping containers but that's expected to more than double by the completion of the project now in the global Shipping trade 7. 5 million containers a year isn't that many but when all the goods facilities are finished our 4 is going to be able to process a massive 99 million tons of cargo annually easily making it one of the biggest ports on the planet that's half the reason Iraqi officials are hoping the port could Herald a new area for the country and even change the balance of power in the region this is the other half the Iraq development Road a 2,000 km 19.
9 billion US Motorway and Railway linking al4 to Turkey in what's been nicknamed the dry Canal design work on the road only finished in September last year and the Project's not expected to complete until 2038 but still when up and running with the reports it could shave a massive 11 days of Journey times compared to the canal that's a tantalizing Prospect for shipping companies looking to avoid the sewers a demographic that's growing in size the volume of shipping here has been hit hard by continued piracy in the Red Sea last year Revenue dropped by nearly half as ships chose to sail the huge detour around the Cape of Good Hope rather than run the gauntlet through the Horn of Africa it also goes without saying that the chaos caused by the grounding of the everg given made the problems of relying on a single trade route acutely clear Egypt's loss so the thinking goes will be Iraq's gain it's hard to overstate how much cash and power comes from controlling a part of the global shipping industry nearly one in three shipping containers goes through the sewers Canal 2% of Egypt's entire GDP comes from operating this stretch of water for Panama which operates the world's other great shipping Canal that figure is over 5% for Iraq a country that's been devastated by Decades of conflict hosting such a vital Link in the global supply chain could not only give it stability and wealth but even transform it into a regional power broker but before we get ahead of ourselves it's important to keep in mind that even by its most ambitious estimates Iraq's dry Canal is not expected to replace the sez entirely rail is faster but is also more expensive than SE Freight it also can't compete with sez in terms of capacity even in 2021 the year of the everg given grounding the canal shipped a record 1. 27 billion tons of cargo Way Beyond anything our forest designed to accommodate there's also the issue of security in Iraq itself while the country security has improved in recent years pockets of Islamic State Fighters remain active as well as the Kurdistan Workers Party who've been known to attack pipelines between Iraq and turkey infrastructure has always had the power to improve our lives in ways we often don't appreciate but sometimes a well planned and well-timed intervention has the ability to quite literally redraw the map of the world over the next 13 years the tiny alfor Peninsula will change beyond all recognition whether or not it can transform an entire country remains to be seen this video was sponsored by ODU you can learn more about that at the link below don't forget that we're inspiring the next generation of Builders through our investment into brick borrow a fantastic Lego subscription service you can learn more and get started today over at brick.
