OSSAMA AL SHARIF
Chairman and CEO
Amiral Holdings Limited

Ossama Al Sharif is the chairman and CEO of Amiral Holdings Ltd. Having built up a major maritime and logistics group in Egypt over the past two decades, Al Sharif has significant experience in establishing and developing successful start-up ventures with global reach.

Al Sharif possesses years of experience in business development, complex strategy implementation and operations. The Amiral Group, of which he is the President and CEO, is a dynamic, rapidly growing multi-national organization, operating on an international scale and across a number of sectors.

Affectionally known as “Captain,” Al Sharif holds a BSc degree in Maritime Science from the Arab Academy for Science, Technology & Maritime Transport, located in Alexandria, Egypt.

In 1992, Al Sharif teamed up with the global shipping line APL, to establish a strong local presence in Jordan and Egypt.

Always innovative, Al Sharif developed the first private container handling company in Egypt in 1997, transforming the Adabyia Port, once a military port, into a commercial hub on the Red Sea with regular service liners.

Building upon these successes, Captain Al Sharif founded the Sokhna Port Development Company in 1999. This serves as the concession holder for Sokhna Port in Egypt. Sokhna Port and Logistics Center was Egypt’s first major public-private partnership and state-of-the-art seaport, created by the Egyptian government and the Sokhna Port Development Company, one of Amiral’s companies.

In building Sokhna Port, Al Sharif launched a modernization drive for best-of-breed maritime logistics in Egypt. Sokhna Port is Egypt’s only private port and logistics center, attractively located at Ain Sokhna on the Red Sea. Moreover, Al Sharif rolled out a pioneering integrated information platform that has made Sokhna Port one of Egypt’s most successful public-private partnership ventures.

Al Sharif is committed to maximizing the opportunities for foreign investment in Egypt. In 2005, he succeeded in attracting approximately US$2 billion of foreign investment to the Sokhna Port for future developments. His objective in securing these funds was to ensure sustainable development in the port area as regards to job creation and building a sound industrial base, which will, in turn, contribute towards Egypt’s expanding economy.