Oman’s first light industries park to be ready by the third quarter of 2018

Muscat: Oman’s first integrated light industries park, Sandan, has achieved tremendous progress in building the facility near Mabela, which will open for customers in the third quarter of 2018.
Around 70 per cent of the structural works at the industrial park, which will cater to automobile and building material businesses, is complete now, Said Nasser Al Rashdi, chief executive officer of Sandan Development, told journalists on Wednesday.
More than 1,000 units are undergoing finishing activities to ensure the timely delivery of the project, said Mohamed bin Sulaiman Al Kindi, chairman of Sandan Development.
The purpose-built shops are mainly for automobile and building material industrial shops and the total cost of the project in the first phase is estimated at OMR60 million, while the total cost for two phases will be around OMR100 million.
The industrial park, which will have more than 250,000 square meters of space, will accommodate 2,200 workshops and showrooms for building materials and automobiles, 400 offices and 1,800 residential units for workers. “The residential units are designed in studio-apartment style to accommodate people working in workshops and other shops,” said Al Rashdi.
The automobile units include used car showrooms, spare parts units, garages, auto electricians, tyre vendors and accessory units, while construction related units include sanitaryware shops, ceramic tile shops and carpentry and aluminium workshops.
“The industrial park will have the largest number of used car showrooms, in a siingle location in Oman. There will be around 56 used car showrooms, which will be able to sell 1,100 cars at the same time,” he added.
Further, there will be other facilities like banks, money exchanges and restaurants.
The average area of a workshop is 76 square metres, showrooms are of 96 square metres each and studio apartments are 50 square metres area each.
Al Rashdi said that Sandan Development is also in negotiation with some of the government entities to bring as many services as possible to the light industries park. “We have already reached an agreement with Oman Post and the postal department will deliver letters to the shops rather than depositing in post boxes. We also have an agreement with Oman Telecommunications Company (Omantel) for optic fibre connection. We have also started negotiation with Mwasalat for starting bus services to the park,” added Al Rashdi.
Sandan Light Industries Park, which is the first of its kind in Oman, opens a window of promising investments and development through the small and medium enterprise sector for dynamic young entrepreneurs to build a wide range of projects benefiting the features of bespoke administrative and financial facilitations.
Being an integrated project, Sandan industrial park is supported by a wide range of facilities equipped with latest technology. To deliver the units on time, the company has agreed with the contractor on increasing the number of workers to 2,000 people and work hours to 16 per day; starting from 06am to 10pm.
With three front line entry and ten exits, the project is ideally located for customers coming from Muscat or Batinah and ensures the smooth flow of traffic. When the project is completed, the park can accommodate 10,000 people with services ensuring a comfortable living environment with a mosque, hypermarket, hospital, shopping centers, banks, travel offices, restaurants and many other amenities.