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Sharjah’s industrial corridor: from overflow market to primary hub

#Sharjah#Infrastructure#Market

Record industrial property transactions, a new bonded dry port at Sajaa and a deep manufacturing base. Why the Sharjah corridor deserves a closer look.

By JP8 ·

For years, Sharjah was where businesses went when Dubai was too expensive. The last twelve months of data suggest that picture is out of date.

The numbers

  • Transactions: industrial real estate transactions in Sharjah rose 88.7% in 2025 to AED 9.24 billion, across 4,416 properties, according to the Sharjah Real Estate Registration Department (reported by Gulf Today). The figure includes land, so it measures activity rather than rents. Even so, the direction is clear.
  • Industrial base: Sharjah is home to around 40% of the UAE’s industrial establishments and more than 2,800 manufacturing facilities, according to Invest in Sharjah.
  • Investment: industrial investment reached AED 1.6 billion across 31 projects in 2025, and AED 3.51 billion across 99 projects over five years (Invest in Sharjah, citing fDi Markets).

In its 2025/26 market review, Knight Frank described Sharjah as moving from “an overflow market to a primary industrial hub”.

Infrastructure is catching up

In December 2025, Gulftainer opened the Sajaa Bonded Dry Port, a 70-hectare inland logistics hub between Sharjah and Khorfakkan Port, linked to Khorfakkan by a bonded transport corridor. Khorfakkan sits on the Gulf of Oman coast, outside the Strait of Hormuz, and the dry port gives importers a direct bonded route into the Sajaa corridor. Gulftainer has also pointed to future rail links.

Together with the E611 and the Sajaa industrial areas, this makes the corridor a serious option for logistics and manufacturing businesses serving the Northern Emirates and beyond.

What to watch

Sharjah comes with caveats. No institutional rent series is published for Al Sajaa, Emirates Industrial City or Hamriyah, so decisions rest on private comparisons and local knowledge. And some parts of the Northern Emirates have more empty space than others. Being selective about the right plot and the right building matters more here than in a market with deep, standard data.

The JP8 view

We think the Sharjah corridor is one of the most interesting industrial markets in the UAE right now, especially for small and mid-size businesses that need good-quality units at a sensible cost. It is a focus market for JP8, and we will publish more on it as our work there develops.

Want to talk about the Sharjah corridor? Contact the partners.