Hapag-Lloyd fills the land gap between India and the Gulf

Photo: Hapag-Lloyd By Angelo Mathais India correspondent 05/05/2026 Hapag-Lloyd seems to have geared up to fill the booking gaps following the suspension of landbridge-based coverage by Gemini partner Maersk for imports into the Persian Gulf region. The German liner has announced it would accept dry, reefer and in-gauge special cargo containers for Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Iraq, and the UAE, supported by a bonded trucking service between Sharjah and Khor Fakkan. Hapag-Lloyd claimed this partnership, using third-party feeder services, would enable connectivity into the upper Gulf without transiting the Strait of Hormuz – but questions remain over schedule reliability. “Feeder rotations do not operate on a fixed weekly schedule and remain subject to transit safety conditions in the region,” the advisory noted. “The lead time for bonded transport between Sharjah and Khor Fakkan is approximately five days.” Hapag-Lloyd, like other carriers, halted Middle East booking on 4 March, soon after the US/Israel-Iran conflict broke out. Several mainline carriers have returned to the Gulf trade in recent weeks, concentrating calls at Khor Fakkan and Fujairah in the UAE, and Sohar in Oman, as alternatives to Jebel Ali, as authorities there laid out multimodal networks extending beyond the regional borders. However, on17 April Maersk told customers it was temporarily pausing bookings for the upper Gulf with landbridge solutions, due to supply chain bottlenecks on the land side. Meanwhile, Hapag-Lloyd had a critical breakthrough in the Gulf: one of its six containerships stranded by the conflict safely passed through recently, according to reports. Said to have been deployed on an India-Africa service, it had been trapped for almost seven weeks. According to reports, the charter held by Hapag-Lloyd for one of the other ships expired, so the carrier now needs deal with the release of only four. A Panama-flagged general cargo ship – HMM Namu, reportedly operated by South Korean liner HMM, came under attack yesterday while at anchor outside the port limits of Umm Al Quwain in the UAE, which has caused fresh supply chain security tensions.  

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• May 6th, 2026
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