Sergey Shishkarev Proposes Establishing a Regional Grain Hub in Oman

Sergey Shishkarev, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Delo Group, joined a delegation led by Nikolay Patrushev, Aide to the President of the Russian Federation and Chairman of the Maritime Collegium, on a working visit to the Sultanate of Oman. The visit included interagency consultations attended by Oman’s Minister of Transport, Communications and Information Technology, Said Al-Maawali.

During the meeting, Sergey Shishkarev highlighted Oman as a promising jurisdiction for Russian business, offering significant potential for synergy between the economic and logistics capabilities of the two countries. Particular focus was placed on agricultural logistics: over the past three years, more than 570,000 tonnes of grain have been shipped to Oman via the Delo Group terminal in Novorossiysk. The Group’s founder proposed exploring the creation of a regional grain hub and flour-milling facilities in Oman with the participation of Delo Group.

In addition, Sergey Shishkarev proposed establishing an international consortium — potentially registered in Oman — to implement infrastructure projects under the International North-South Transport Corridor. The consortium could include countries of the Persian Gulf, India, and China. He noted the need to construct a 160 km double-track railway of Russian standard gauge (1,520 mm) on the Iranian section of the corridor. Implementation of the project would increase route capacity to 100 million tonnes, including 2 million TEU.

“The Sultanate of Oman is a friendly jurisdiction for us, with a resilient multimodal backbone. Our objective is to achieve synergy in agrilogistics, establish a regional grain hub with subsequent deliveries to African countries — where Russian grain is traditionally in demand — and develop a new container transport architecture. We have proposed creating a container hub in the Sultanate that could eventually compete with the region’s largest ports,” Sergey Shishkarev said.

The consultations also addressed joint analysis of cargo flows to enable multiple growth in container transportation, the use of the Port of Salalah terminal together with the Hafeet Rail project in global supply chains, and prospects for registering vessels under the Sultanate of Oman’s maritime registry.