PIBTL wants to become Pakistan’s minerals export gateway

Pakistan International Bulk Terminal Ltd (PIBTL) was conceived as a solution to one of Karachi’s less glamorous logistical problems: how to unload millions of tonnes of coal without coating the country’s largest city in yet another layer of black dust.

Nearly a decade after the terminal began operating, however, its future may increasingly depend not on what Pakistan imports, but on what it hopes to export.

PIBTL has secured expanded rights from the Port Qasim Authority (PQA) to handle, store and export copper-gold commodities, metals, minerals and other natural earth products. It has also signed an agreement with Reko Diq Mining Company for the handling of copper and gold concentrate from the enormous mine being developed in Balochistan.

At an investor conference organised by Topline Securities in Karachi, PIBTL’s management presented the supplementary agreement as the beginning of a broader transformation: from a terminal built mainly around imported coal and cement-sector cargo into an export gateway for Pakistan’s emerging mining industry.

The company’s formal disclosure to the Pakistan Stock Exchange, made in December 2025, said the supplemental implementation agreement grants PIBTL the concessions, rights and licences needed to handle copper-gold commodities and other minerals and metals. Unlike its exclusive rights relating to cement and clinker under the original agreement, however, PIBTL’s new mineral-handling rights are explicitly non-exclusive.

That distinction matters. PIBTL has secured access to a potentially enormous new market, but not a monopoly over it.