MSC has suspended all bookings for worldwide cargo to the Middle East region until further notice.
CMA CGM advises that all vessels inside Gulf, and bound to Gulf, have been instructed with immediate effect to proceed to shelter. Passage through the Suez Canal has been suspended until further notice, and vessels will be rerouted via the Cape of Good Hope. This is a major change as they have been transiting the Red Sea on several services for more than a year.
CMA CGM introduces an Emergency Conflict Surcharge at
2000 USD/20′, 3000 USD/40′ and 4000 USD/reefer. This is not just cargo to/from the Gulf but also includes all Red Sea ports in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Djibouti, Sudan and Eritrea.
Maersk advises that all sailings on MECL and ME11 will now be redirected by to round-Africa instead of the Suez routing they had just switched to.
Debris from an intercepted drone hit the port in Jebel Ali causing a fire.
This shows the seriousness behind Iran’s declaration that the Strait of Hormuz is closed. Similar to the Red Sea,
“closed” just means you risk being attacked, and we still do see some vessels transit – such as the “Skylight”
Almost all container vessels have ceased transits, but a few still go through.
Presently 2 Iranian flagged container vessels, 14500 TEU
“Radin” and 2500 TEU “Artnos” left Bandar Abbas and crossed out of the Strait of Hormuz.
We also see 3500 TEU “SLS Topaz” having transited the Strait of Hormuz. I am not fully certain who operates the vessel, but what I can see is that it is listed in the sailing schedules for both Hapag-Lloyd and Maersk, and on the schedule site from Hapag-Lloyd they list it as being operated by Maersk, but that is not a guarantee the info is correct.
We should expect to see major container vessels with cargo inbound for the Gulf discharge Gulf-bound cargo in Salalah, Khor Fakkan, Sohar, Duqm and Colombo. From there be transported by smaller vessels willing to transit.
Just as we for more than 2 years have seen smaller carriers willing to transit the Red Sea risk area.
This will create port congestion problems in the mentioned ports, but will also eventually result in congestion problems further out in Asia as carriers at some point will cease loading cargo to the Gulf if they are unsure it can go the final destination. We risk seeing Singapore, Tanjung Pelepas and Port Klang become transhipment bottlenecks for cargo which otherwise would be sent directly to the Gulf.
This will create port congestion problems in the mentioned ports, but will also eventually result in congestion problems further out in Asia as carriers at some point will cease loading cargo to the Gulf if they are unsure it can go the final destination. We risk seeing Singapore, Tanjung Pelepas and Port Klang become transhipment bottlenecks for cargo which otherwise would be sent directly to the Gulf.
It will result in rapidly rising spot rates for cargo to the Gulf area.
In addition shippers should prepare for a ripple effect with rising spot rates on other major deep-sea trades as well.
