Khalifa Port storage charges: no volume relief

This page is about one Emirati port: Khalifa Port, UN/LOCODE AEKHL, on the coast between Abu Dhabi and Dubai. It is the second UAE gateway on this site after Jebel Ali, and reading the two tariffs beside each other turns up something a desk that ships into both should know before it quotes a lane.

The rates are the same. The relief is not.

What is published, and what is not

Khalifa Port has three container terminals and a RoRo terminal. Abu Dhabi Terminals runs the original semi-automated container terminal. CSP Abu Dhabi Terminal is COSCO SHIPPING Ports’ facility under a 35-year concession. CMA Terminals Khalifa Port is CMA CGM’s, under a concession of the same length. Autoterminal Khalifa Port handles vehicles.

Of the three container terminals, one publishes a tariff schedule that could be read and checked for this page: CMA Terminals Khalifa Port, whose Terms and Conditions of Use and Tariffs, schedule CMATKPST2025, was revised in December 2025. Every number below comes out of that document.

The other two are not reproduced here, because their schedules were not verified. That matters more at a multi-terminal port than it sounds: at Nhava Sheva the five container terminals publish five different free periods, and the widest gap belongs to one operator. Assume nothing about KPCT or CSP from the table below. Ask for the schedule by name.

The import table

The counting rule is one line of § 2.15: storage rates “apply per day, including the discharge date”. The day the box comes off the vessel is day one. There is no exclusion for weekends, and none for public holidays, so a consignment discharged on a Thursday before a long weekend spends those days inside its ten.

Now put Jebel Ali next to it

DP World’s UAE tariff book gives an ordinary import full container at Jebel Ali ten free days from discharge, then AED 82 and AED 164 for five days, then AED 153 and AED 306. Line that up against the table above and the two are identical: same free period, same first band, same length of first band, same top band, same currency.

Two different operators, two different emirates, one set of numbers.

The difference is in a clause Khalifa’s published schedule does not have. Jebel Ali’s tariff grants extra free time by consignment size: 14 free days at 30 containers and 20 at 100. The CMA Terminals schedule sets out one free period for full imports and no volume provision at all.

Ten days of exposure on a hundred boxes, appearing and disappearing purely on which terminal the vessel worked. A desk that has internalised “we get twenty days at the UAE gateway” has internalised a Jebel Ali clause and will be wrong at Abu Dhabi.

The hazardous tables run the other way round

The second difference is sharper, and it runs in Khalifa’s favour.

At Jebel Ali an IMDG class 5 container gets no free time at all and is charged AED 500 a day for ten days and AED 1,000 a day after that. Class 8 gets three free days and then the ordinary bands.

At CMA Terminals Khalifa Port, hazardous cargo storage is one row covering all classes and all sizes: five free days, then AED 82 for a 20ft and AED 164 for a 40ft for the next ten days, then AED 153 or AED 306. Read that beside the ordinary import table and the two converge on day 16, because the hazardous box trades five free days for five extra days in the cheap band. On a 20ft container that clears by day 15, the whole hazardous penalty is AED 410.

One class of cargo is carved out of that leniency. Motor fuel anti-knock mixtures, IMO class 6.1 under UN 1649, get two free days on an import and then AED 675 a day.

So the generalisation “hazardous costs more at the port” is true at both, and the size of the difference is not comparable. At one it is a few hundred dirhams; at the other it can be five figures before the paperwork is finished.

Two emirates, two filing systems

The storage clock is only half of what a late clearance costs, and the other half starts with the declaration.

Dubai’s importers file through Mirsal 2 on the Dubai Trade portal. Abu Dhabi’s file through the Advanced Trade & Logistics Platform, which calls itself “The Official Single Window For Trade In Abu Dhabi” and is operated by Maqta Gateway. They are different systems, with different registrations, run by different authorities in the same country.

A desk that has cleared into Jebel Ali for years and takes its first box through Khalifa is not repeating a familiar process on a new lane. The declaration goes somewhere else. Where a clearing agent is engaged, check that its registration covers the emirate the box is entering, because a broker’s Dubai credentials are not Abu Dhabi credentials.

Two clocks, as everywhere

Everything above is the terminal’s charge for the ground the container stands on. It is published, it is the same for every user of that terminal, and it can be known before the vessel sails.

It is not your carrier’s demurrage, which is a charge for the box itself, set in your service contract, and different between two importers who came off the same ship. The two run on separate clocks and an importer who clears late pays both. This page carries no carrier free-time rows, and will not until a real lane’s terms have been read.

The bands above are enough to do the arithmetic yourself: our demurrage calculations tool takes the free days and the rate bands off the tariff you are reading and gives the charge day by day.

That leaves the practical question, which is not what the rates are. It is whether the document pack will be complete inside ten days. Software that tracks the free time per terminal can tell you the date. Getting the bill of lading, the certificate of origin and the insurance out of four organisations that do not report to you, before that date, is the work. The last free day is the deadline; the documents are the job.