A $20 million dry port and bonded warehouse within the Sovannaphum special economic zone (SEZ) in Kandal province is slated to open by October of this year ahead of the full completion of the 214-hectare zone by 2020, a senior management official said yesterday.

Anurut Chaochavanil, logistics and marketing director for the SEZ, said the dry port will cover 18 hectares of land and will include a 40,000-square-metre warehouse and a 40,000-square-metre yard with space to store up to 3,000 containers at a time.

“At this moment we are on schedule to open the dry port in October 2017,” he said, adding that the facility would provide a one-stop shop for import and export services and could serve as an agricultural warehousing hub.

Anurut added that 85 percent of the construction on the dry port and bonded warehouse was complete and that Sovannaphum Investment Co Ltd, the Thai-owned developer of the zone, has earmarked $56 million for its completion by 2020.

“We are developing a high-standard SEZ that will be environmentally friendly and will have 24-hour security,” he said. “It will also have waste collection and disposal services as well as cheap access to electricity and water.”

Song Saran, CEO of rice exporter Amru Rice,said that an additional dry port on the banks of the Mekong River in Kandal province could play a useful role in storing Cambodia’s agricultural products.

“Because we are exporters, we really need to have more options for our products,” he said. “We need convenient locations that we can access and which can help lower the costs of logistics.”