Major shipping companies, including MSC, Maersk and CMA-CGM, have found a partial solution to bypass the effectively closed Strait of Hormuz amid the US war against Iran.
Points of attention
- Major shipping companies have found alternative routes from the Red Sea and Gulf of Oman to bypass the effectively closed Strait of Hormuz due to the US war against Iran.
- The capacity of land bridges and trucks is being utilized to transport goods previously carried by large container ships through the closed waterway.
Companies find temporary safe route despite closed Strait of Hormuz
All major shipping companies, including MSC, Maersk, CMA-CGM and Hapag-Lloyd, have opened routes for cargo transportation from ports in the Red Sea and Gulf of Oman, including Yanbu and King Abdullah in Saudi Arabia and Fujairah in the UAE, to ports such as Dammam in Saudi Arabia, Basra in Iraq and Jebel Ali in the UAE, the largest transport hub in the region.
It is noted that trucks can replace only a portion of the capacity provided by large container ships and cargo ships that were previously used to transport various products through the Strait of Hormuz, which has been effectively closed to shipping since the start of the US-Israeli war against Iran on February 28.
Only a few ships could pass through this waterway each day compared to approximately 135 daily passages before the war.
About 38 more ships were attacked.
"The only way to get cargo there (to other ports — ed.) is via a land bridge... but of course the capacity of all these land bridges is much lower," Hapag-Lloyd CEO Rolf Habben Jansen said in a recent company podcast.
He added that trade flows to the Gulf region have decreased by 60-80%.
One shipping industry lawyer said ports are being forced to prioritize essential goods such as food and medicine.
The consumer goods arm of Indian conglomerate Tata said tea, salt and pulses bound for the Middle East are now being sent to ports such as Jeddah in Saudi Arabia and Khorfakkan in the UAE for onward transportation by land.
A London shipbroker said grain traders were also rerouting cargoes through Red Sea and Gulf of Oman ports before transporting them further by trucks and smaller vessels.
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