Red Sea Gateway Terminal Steps Up

By Leslie Meredith

Red Sea Gateway Terminal is one of the rising terminal operators in the Middle East, while building toward a larger regional role when conflict thrust it into that position ahead of schedule. RSGT’s location on the Red Sea, on the far western side of Saudi Arabia, has made it the primary alternative gateway for the Kingdom and the GCC. The pressure is on. Lars Greiner, CEO of multipurpose terminals for RSGT, has been preparing for it for weeks.

Prepared and Moving

RSGT, the largest container terminal operator by capacity and volume in KSA has expanded their service portfolio to multipurpose in 2025.  RSGT took over multipurpose terminal operations at four Red Sea ports in July 2025. By the time Greiner sat down with Breakbulk at the Middle East event in Dubai on February 5, the terminals had already posted a 40% increase in monthly general cargo volumes, driven by faster vessel turnaround. 

Western Saudi was on the rise, Greiner said then, and he expected volumes to continue rising as manufacturing and other economic levers were applied by the Saudi government. Twenty-three days later, conflict erupted in Iran. RSGT was ready.

“When this first started looking like a possibility, we started taking measures,” Greiner said. The terminals are now handling significantly larger volumes than previously. 

On March 13, Saudi Transport Minister Saleh Al-Jasser announced the Logistics Corridors Initiative, which will establish dedicated routes to handle cargoes currently moving through ports in the Kingdom’s Eastern Region and other Gulf states to Jeddah Islamic Port and other ports on the Red Sea coast.

What is happening right now, Greiner says, is really just a catalyst for development that was already coming. 

The question now is how long the conflict continues, and what that means for the planning horizon. “Even if it stops tomorrow, it will take a couple of weeks, if not months for things to normalize again,” Greiner said. “The longer it goes on, the longer the normalization will take.” 

That means running short, medium, and longer-term planning simultaneously and not waiting to see how things develop before making decisions. Government and regional priorities may need to be set, with some initiatives considered essential and others postponed as necessary. Greiner is direct about that. What he is equally direct about is that there is a plan, and the focus is on executing it.

Lessons From the Ground

Asked what other ports and terminal operators could take from RSGT’s experience, Greiner offers four points.

1. Stakeholders must cooperate, from the authorities through to the cargo owners. Greiner credits the Saudi Ports Authority (Mawani) and Saudi Customs for moving quickly, establishing regular crisis coordination meetings and working closely with the industry to set up new processes as volumes surged.
2. Understand each entity's capabilities and limitations, because you're only as strong as your weakest link. That awareness is what allows the right decisions to get made under pressure, and the right resources to get to where they need to be in time.
3. Put the right people in the right place, and be ready to bring on more and move resources to where they need to be. The ability to surge staffing and equipment quickly is what keeps operations from falling behind.
4. Adopt the right mindset. "It's more of a how-can-we attitude rather than focusing on what could go wrong, common in Western cultures," Greiner said, who is South African and worked in Germany up until he made the move to Saudi. That positive perspective was what drew him to Saudi Arabia in the first place, and it can be applied anywhere.

Young Port, Young Country

RSGT is, by its own CEO’s description, one of the younger large terminal operators and still quite small. “Because of our youth, because of our agility and because of the vision of our leaders, we’re very versatile,” Greiner said. “That’s what gives us the advantage right now.” 

Western Saudi reflects something similar. A young and growing population, untapped mineral wealth in the Arabian Shield region, and a government concentrating major development investment in this part of the country. It is dynamic, it is expanding, and driven by the government’s Vision 2030. 

RSGT’s new group CEO Lars Vang Christensen’s message to the team has been consistent: stay positive, stay calm and deliver. That’s the Greiner way. “Our responsibility is to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, to ensure that the goods and services we have offered continue to flow,” Greiner said. “And that is what we are going to do."

Lars Greiner is CEO of RSGT MPT Saudi. He spoke with Breakbulk on March 20, 2026.