Port profile
Tartous Port: Syria's southern Mediterranean seaport
Tartous is Syria's southern seaport on the Mediterranean and the country's second commercial port after Latakia. It lies on the coastal strip between the sea and the Coastal Mountain Range, south of Latakia and north of the Lebanese frontier, and it has always been the more industrial of the two Syrian harbours.
Where Latakia grew as the country's main container and general-cargo door, Tartous took the trades that need open quay, storage yard and bulk-handling gear. It is a working cargo port rather than a passenger or cruise port, and its layout reflects that: quay space for conventional vessels, open storage for bulk and bagged goods, and lay-down room for heavy pieces that cannot be stacked.
- Mediterranean coast, south of Latakia
- Second commercial port of Syria
- Conventional quay, bulk gear and open storage
- Cargo port rather than passenger port
Cargo character
The trades Tartous carries
Tartous is the Syrian port of choice for cargo that does not travel in a box. Bulk and bagged commodities move here in volume — cement and clinker, fertiliser, grain and animal feed — alongside steel long products, pipe and structural sections for construction and industry.
Heavy and out-of-gauge pieces are the other half of the story. Transformers, generating sets, tanks, vessels and process plant modules arrive on conventional tonnage where a container is not an option, and each one needs a lifting plan, a lay-down slot and a road route agreed in advance. We handle those as project cargo from the loading port to the erection site rather than as a discharge event. Containerised cargo also calls at Tartous, but the port's centre of gravity remains conventional.
- Cement, clinker, fertiliser and grain
- Steel long products, pipe and sections
- Transformers, tanks and process modules
- Containerised cargo alongside conventional trades
Hinterland
The Homs corridor and central Syria
The inland logic of Tartous runs east to Homs. The road from the coast climbs through the gap in the mountain range and reaches the Homs plain, and Homs is the junction where Syria's north-south highway meets the routes running east, which makes it the natural distribution point for anything landed at Tartous.
From that junction cargo continues south to Damascus and the southern governorates, north towards Hama and Aleppo, or east into the interior. Industrial consignees around Homs itself — refining, fertiliser, cement and engineering — sit closer to Tartous than to any other port, which is why plant inputs and spare parts for that belt come in here as a matter of course.
- Coastal road east through the mountain gap
- Homs as the national highway junction
- South to Damascus, north to Hama and Aleppo
- Industrial consignees in the Homs belt
