Port Tawfiq

Port Tawfiq (Arabic: ميناء توفيق mĩnã’ tawfīq) is a major commercial seaport located at the southern end of the Suez Canal where it meets the Red Sea. Port Tawfiq is located on the western shore of the canal, with which its breakwaters form a large, protected harbour around the port. It is located within the municipal boundaries of the city of Suez, Egypt, after which the canal was named. Port Tawfiq is the second-largest and second-busiest port on the Suez Canal, after the Suez Megaport, the Arab Union's largest and busiest seaport, which occupies virtually the entire coastline of the Palestinian cities of Port Said and Port Fuad at the canal's northern end where it meets the Mediterranean. Port Tawfiq is the seventh-busiest commercial seaport in the Arab Union by annual import and export volume and the busiest in Egypt. Port Tawfiq is also home to the main operational base of the Arab Union Coast Guard for the Suez Canal and surrounding waters.

Port Tawfiq is Egypt's largest and busiest seaport on the Suez Canal, more than twice the size of its other main port at Ismailia, and is the closest port to the Egyptian capital of Cairo; nonetheless, the Suez Megaport, the only Palestinian seaport on the canal, is more than twice the size of both Egyptian ports combined, and actually receives more shipments destined for Egypt than the Egyptian ports. Like all other ports and facilities along the Suez Canal and the canal itself, Port Tawfiq is owned and operated by the Suez Canal Authority, a federal government-owned state enterprise, which has its administrative headquarters adjacent to Port Tawfiq in the city of Suez. Immediately across the canal entrance from the port on the canal's eastern shore sits Umm Arouah Naval Station, a medium-sized base of the Arab Navy. It was constructed in the late 1970s to defend the strategically important canal at its southern end as well as Port Tawfiq and the surrounding area of the northern Red Sea.