If you ship to the Middle East, you've probably been staring at your freight invoices lately, wondering if someone added an extra digit by mistake. You're not imagining it.
The collapse of Omani-led talks in Salalah this week - talks meant to resolve the Strait of Hormuz passage - has slammed the door shut on any near-term relief. The US-Israel-Iran conflict is now in its seventh month, and the strait remains effectively closed to container shipping.
The result? Gulf-bound spot rates have blown past even the pandemic-era peaks. Average rates from China to Jeddah have hit $10,870 per 40ft**. To Khor al Fakkan - the UAE's bypass port that barely registered on anyone's radar a year ago - rates have reached **$10,626 per 40ft.
Let that sink in. A bypass port that didn't exist as a major gateway a year ago is now commanding rates that would have seemed absurd during the 2021 supply chain meltdown.
How bad is the damage?
Since February 28, spot rates from China to Jeddah are up 256%. To Khor al Fakkan, they're up 479%.
And the container flow tells its own story. According to UKMTO data, 978 vessels of all types have transited outbound through Hormuz since the conflict began, with 717 completing inbound transits. Container ships? Just 6% of that traffic - barely over 100 individual sailings. The strait isn't closed in theory. But for container shipping, it might as well be.
The landbridge isn't the escape hatch people hoped for
Here's where it gets really painful. When the strait closed, the industry pivoted to overland routes - truck cargo from Jeddah or Khor Fakkan into the Gulf. Sounded clever on paper.
In reality? Trucking rates from Jeddah to Jebel Ali have jumped four to five times pre-war levels. A truck that used to cost around $1,066 now runs between $18,000 and $21,000. Demand for road freight capacity hit four to five times supply - and when that happens, prices don't just rise. They go crazy.
As Xeneta's chief analyst Peter Sand put it, landbridges have brought "stability, but it is also coming at a cost for shippers". Maersk was blunter in a customer advisory, calling the landbridge "not a scalable and feasible option in the current conditions".
The surcharges just keep stacking up
If the base rates weren't enough, carriers are layering on fees like nobody's business.
Maersk has introduced a $500 emergency operational cost recovery surcharge for containers to the UAE, Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, and Iraq, effective September 15. That's on top of emergency freight rates of **$1,800 per 20ft, $3,000 per 40ft, and $3,800 for reefers and special equipment**. And a $1,000 per container Strait of Hormuz transit fee added in July.
Hapag-Lloyd isn't far behind, with a War Risk Surcharge of $1,500 per TEU for standard containers and $3,500 for reefers.
Then there's the insurance. War risk cover for Hormuz transits has exploded from 0.10%-0.25% of hull value to 3.5%-7.5% - a thirtyfold increase. For a $100 million vessel, that's up to $7.5 million just to insure a single transit. Those costs don't disappear. They get passed downstream.
So what do you actually do?
Here's the honest truth: there is no magic solution to a closed strait. But there is a difference between shippers who are getting squeezed and shippers who are finding workarounds. And that difference almost always comes down to who they've got in their corner.
This is exactly the kind of market where experience stops being a nice-to-have and starts being essential.
At Xiamen AE Global, we've been navigating supply chain chaos since 2018. We're a government-licensed company with IATA, FIATA, FMC, and NVOCC credentials - which means when a major trade lane blows up, we're not scrambling to figure out who to call. We already have the relationships.
Real options when the obvious ones disappear
With over 100 overseas agents worldwide, we work directly with partners on the ground in Jeddah, Khor Fakkan, and across the Gulf region. We're not reading about congestion at these ports - we're talking to the people managing it.
When the landbridge from Jeddah to Jebel Ali gets priced into oblivion, we're already exploring alternatives. When a carrier slaps on a new surcharge, we're factoring it into your routing strategy before it shows up as a surprise on your invoice. When the Upper Gulf markets like Iraq and Kuwait need cargo, we're looking at TIR trucking corridors through Turkey that can sometimes beat the sea-land combination on both cost and transit time.
That's what a real network delivers. Not just a list of agents, but people who pick up the phone and give you straight answers about what's actually moving.
Technology that gives you clarity when the market gives you chaos
We've invested in real-time visibility tools that give our clients actual transparency - not just a tracking number, but actionable insight into where their containers are, what surcharges are being applied, and what alternatives exist.
Local knowledge, global reach
Based in Xiamen - one of Asia's busiest port cities - we combine the global reach of an IATA and FIATA-approved forwarder with the local knowledge that only comes from moving all kinds of goods for over a decade. We've moved over 12,000 TEUs in a single year with a 98.6% on-time delivery rate for our SME clients.
The bottom line
The Gulf is expensive. The landbridge is buckling. The surcharges are stacking. And the talks that were supposed to fix it all just fell apart.
But here's the thing: shippers who have the right partner aren't just absorbing these costs. They're finding routes, negotiating alternatives, and keeping their supply chains alive.
At Xiamen AE Global, we don't just move boxes. We help our clients navigate the kind of market that makes everyone else want to give up.
Because when the world's most critical waterway is closed for business, you don't need a spectator. You need a partner who knows how to get your cargo moving anyway.
Shipping to the Gulf and tired of the surcharge roulette? Contact Xiamen AE Global today - and let's find a routing strategy that actually works.
