Jordan, UAE Break Ground on $2.5B Railway for Mineral Exports

Construction has begun on a 403-kilometer railway in Jordan that will move phosphate and potash from inland mines to the Port of Aqaba, part of a $2.5 billion build agreed with the United Arab Emirates. The freight corridor is designed to carry as much as 16 million tonnes of minerals a year and is the largest railway project now under way in the country, the Abu Dhabi Media Office said on Monday.

Linking mines to the coast

The line ties the country's mining and production centres to Aqaba's port and to the Maan Logistics Zone, shifting mineral traffic off the road network. The work covers track, roughly 55 bridges, six tunnels and supporting infrastructure. Transport costs for phosphate and potash are expected to fall by about $40 million a year, and about 5,000 jobs are expected to be created in southern Jordan. The railway is also meant to take containers and bulk cargo, moving goods between the coast, industrial sites and inland distribution centres.

Jordan expects the link to open wider access to regional and global markets. The company developing it anticipates spillover work in logistics, engineering, construction and maintenance, among other fields.

Shareholders and the groundbreaking

The Jordan-UAE Railway Company is building the project. Abu Dhabi's L'IMAD Holding is one shareholder; the others are Jordanian — the Social Security Investment Fund, the Government Investments Management Company, Arab Potash Company and Jordan Phosphate Mines Company. King Abdullah II and Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Sheikh Khaled bin Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan attended the groundbreaking ceremony in Aqaba.

A wider rail push

The project sits inside a longer effort to connect Jordan's industrial and logistics centres with markets beyond its borders. An agreement reached in April covered a 360-kilometer line joining the Al-Shidiya and Ghor Al-Safi mining areas to Aqaba, at an investment of about $2.3 billion. That earlier plan was drawn up to strengthen the country's mineral export capacity and to prepare the ground for a broader national network. It followed four agreements signed in 2024 for the $2.3 billion Aqaba Port Railway, which formed part of a $5.5 billion investment package the two countries agreed in 2023.

The UAE's network

Inside the UAE, the national railway runs about 900 kilometers across all seven emirates. Freight services have operated since 2023, and passenger services began launching in phases in 2026. Etihad Rail, which operates that network, is extending its reach across borders. One such effort is Hafeet Rail, a planned 238-kilometer link between the UAE and Oman, which would tie the UAE more tightly into the region's rail map and widen its connections to neighbouring markets.