Hormuz deal stalls as Fujairah and Khor Fakkan waits double

A week ago the open question was whether the Hormuz corridor deal would be signed. It was not. Iran has since widened its conditions well beyond the shipping lane, transits fell rather than rose, and three separate vessels were hit or fired on in seven days. Meanwhile the ports that were supposed to be the way around the problem have become the problem: waiting times at Fujairah and Khor Fakkan both more than doubled in a week.

Container rates this week

Drewry's World Container Index rose 1% to $4,339 per FEU in the 13 August reading, a second consecutive weekly gain. The composite is flat only because it is averaging two opposite markets. The transpacific ripped — Shanghai–New York up 10%, Shanghai–Los Angeles up 6% — while Asia–Europe gave back ground, with Genoa down 8% and Rotterdam down 5%.

The transpacific strength is manufactured, not demanded. Drewry counted ten cancelled sailings in each of the past two weeks with another seven planned, and its cancelled-sailings tracker showed 52 blank sailings across weeks 33 to 37, a 7% cancellation rate weighted 60% to the transpacific. On Asia–Europe the opposite is happening: Freightos reported on 13 August that carriers are cancelling or reducing planned mid-month increases into a weak market, which is what the Genoa and Rotterdam prints are telling you.

The number that matters most to a feeder operator is the one nobody leads with. Drewry's Intra-Asia index rose 6% to $1,028 per FEU, a six-week high. Xeneta's 13 August update put Far East–North Europe at $4,909 and Far East–US East Coast at $10,249, and Peter Sand's advice was to take shorter-tenure contracts rather than lock in long deals in a rising market. Xeneta also has Far East–Persian Gulf spot rates up 2.8 times since January, above both the Covid and Red Sea peaks on that corridor.

As last week, we have not printed an SCFI composite. The Shanghai Shipping Exchange publishes its table through a script that does not resolve, and the secondary feeds either returned errors or carried undated figures. The most recent SCFI Persian Gulf component we can attribute is $4,894 per TEU from 31 July, now two weeks stale and sourced to a forwarder rather than the exchange, so treat it as background rather than this week's price.

Industry headlines

The Hormuz deal was not signed, and Iran raised its price. Iran and Oman agreed coordinates for a temporary route and a joint coordination centre, and a joint statement reached final drafting. Then it went backwards. On 12 August Iran's top security official said the strait would stay closed unless the US releases frozen assets and ends conflicts across the region, including in Lebanon — conditions that have nothing to do with a shipping lane. Iran is asking 5% to 7% of cargo value as a transit fee against Oman's suggested 3%, and a US official has said any temporary route must carry no tolls at all. Lloyd's List Intelligence counted 78 transits in the week to 9 August, down from 95, with non-Iranian traffic down to 45 from 63. That figure covers every vessel type; for boxes specifically, Linerlytica's 11 August market pulse recorded just two containerships making outbound passages in the same week. The direction of travel reversed this week.

The US Navy disabled a containership, and the two accounts of where it was going do not agree. On 11 August a US MH-60 fired two Hellfire missiles into the engine room of the Panama-flagged boxship Vela Nova about 71 nautical miles off Pakistan. Steering was destroyed, a fire was put out, and all 17 crew survived. CENTCOM says the vessel ignored warnings while heading for an Iranian port in breach of the blockade. Against that, the Vela Nova was carried in Jebel Ali's arrival line-up before the strike. We are printing both because we cannot reconcile them, and because a contested destination is the whole point of the story rather than a detail within it. What is not contested: the ship was not itself sanctioned — it was interdicted on pattern of life rather than on any designation — and CENTCOM's running count is now 55 vessels redirected, three disabled and two boarded. If a boxship can be disabled by missile in the Gulf of Oman on somebody's assessment of where it is headed, clean paperwork is not doing the work owners think it is.

Six killed on the Tihamah in Bab el-Mandeb. Three ballistic missiles hit the Egyptian-owned, Tanzania-flagged Tihamah on 12 August, with a further missile landing during the rescue. Three Pakistani crew, one Indonesian crew member and two Yemeni rescuers were killed and ten wounded. These are the first shipping deaths attributed to the Houthis since late February. Bab el-Mandeb transits fell to 200 in the week to 9 August, the lowest weekly count in a year, and Suez transits to 263 from 275. Gemini had restored its AE19 loop to Suez on 10 August, two days before the attack.

SeaLead has gone. The Singapore-headquartered carrier, with Dubai and India subsidiaries, filed for voluntary liquidation with a liquidator appointed on 4 August, following OFAC's 14 July designation. Its fleet had fallen from around 208,000 TEU in May 2025 to under 70,000 TEU, and from 13th to roughly 80th in the Alphaliner rankings. The assets moved within days: Corten Shipping took the container equipment and CULines took the Danaos charters to build out its Far East–Middle East services. A Middle East competitor was dismantled and redistributed in a fortnight.

Carriers made money; the Gulf leg is what it cost them. Maersk lifted second-quarter revenue 20% to $15.8bn and raised full-year EBITDA guidance to $10.5–12.5bn. Hapag-Lloyd is the more honest mirror for this region: second-quarter net profit of $83m against $306m a year earlier, a first-half net loss of $173m, roughly $600m of Hormuz-related cost in the quarter alone, and Middle East volumes down 20% in the quarter and 24% across the half.

Port congestion

The bypass is now the bottleneck. Median waiting at anchorage in the week of 2 to 8 August, per Portcast, shows the congestion has relocated wholesale from the Gulf's west side to its east coast and Oman.

These are medians at anchorage and are not comparable with the seven-day averages Kuehne+Nagel publishes, which run higher; we have kept the two apart deliberately.

Jeddah deserves care, because the two readings conflict only if you assume they measure the same thing. Anchorage waiting fell 73%, but Expeditors still reported 10 to 12 day landside delays after discharge on 12 August, and Kuehne+Nagel logged berthing delays of 10 to 21 days in its 29 July to 4 August update. Ships are getting alongside faster. The queue has moved inland to the yard and the gate.

Elsewhere, Typhoon Dolphin hit China's east coast on 9 August and stranded more than 2.4m TEU of containership capacity; Shanghai and Ningbo restarted within days but the backlog will take weeks to clear. Colombo is the one to watch on our lanes — Kuehne+Nagel attributes its congestion directly to Middle East cargo diversions. In Europe, Barcelona is the worst reading at 3.67 days after a week-long rail shutdown, and the Rhine at Kaub fell to 21cm on 3 August, the lowest since records began in 1880, with no meaningful recovery expected before October. Note also that FNV Havens has called a national Dutch port strike for 4 September covering Rotterdam, Amsterdam and Zeeland.

Sea-Intelligence's latest global schedule reliability reading is 62.6% for June, down 4.7 points year on year, with Middle East–Europe now sitting in the most volatile tier of trades worldwide. The July figure is not out yet.

Gulf & UAE trade

DP World's numbers put a figure on Jebel Ali's year. First-half revenue rose 13.1% to $12.7bn, but profit after tax fell 39% to $585m and gross throughput fell 5.7% to 42.8m TEU. Strip out Jebel Ali and volumes rose 5.4%. AGBI reports Jebel Ali throughput down 60% across the half and effectively at zero in the second quarter, with the port running roughly 1,000 container moves a day against about 40,000 before the war. The terminals are undamaged and fully operational — which is exactly why the 0.08-day waiting time above is not good news.

AD Ports is the other side of the same trade. Second-quarter net profit rose 86% to AED 596.7m on revenue up 47% to AED 7.08bn, with the maritime and shipping cluster up 62%. It launched new feeder services at Fujairah Terminals and Khor Fakkan connecting the Red Sea, upper Gulf, India and Pakistan, deployed 27 container vessels, added 400 trucks and built land corridors from Fujairah and Khor Fakkan through to Khalifa, Jebel Ali and Sharjah. It also took its stake in Dubai's Global Feeder Shipping to 81%. Cargo that cannot reach Jebel Ali by sea is being walked there by road.

Two carrier notices that change how you book. Maersk's Middle East update of 12 August suspends acceptance of empty containers at their usual return locations across the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia (Jubail), Iraq and Oman (Duqm), effective immediately and until further notice — check your equipment positions and detention exposure now. And on 14 August MSC stopped accepting Europe, Mediterranean and Black Sea cargo transiting Jeddah or King Abdullah Port unless the final destination is inside Saudi Arabia. That closes the landbridge workaround a lot of Gulf-bound European cargo had been using, including the King Abdullah rerouting MSC itself was offering a week ago. Separately, Maersk's emergency contingency surcharge from the Indian subcontinent to the UAE rises to $2,100 per 20ft and $3,300 per 40ft from 15 August.

The attacks reached ADNOC again this morning. The UAE condemned an Iranian attack on two ADNOC-operated vessels in the strait on the morning of 14 August, calling it piracy and a breach of UN regulations. It is not an isolated incident — ADNOC ships have been struck repeatedly since February.

Capacity is being built for the new map. Gulftainer is putting $2bn into taking Khor Fakkan Commercial Terminal from 3.5m to 10m TEU over 36 months, plus bonded dry ports at Al Dhaid and Sajaa. Weekly throughput at Khor Fakkan has gone from 8,000 TEU before the crisis to 65,000 TEU. DP World is building two ultra-large terminals on the east coast near Fujairah. Nobody spending that money expects this to be over by Christmas.

The Nautica view

Last week we said a drafted deal was not a signed one. This week Iran attached the release of frozen assets and the end of the war in Lebanon to a shipping lane, and the transit count fell. Stop pricing a reopening into anything. The more useful shift is that the east-coast bypass has stopped being free: 9.25 days at Fujairah and 4.81 at Khor Fakkan is a real cost, and it will get worse before Gulftainer's berths arrive. Build those days into your transit times now rather than explaining them later. And read the Vela Nova carefully before you dismiss it as somebody else's problem: a ship that was in Jebel Ali's arrival line-up was disabled by missile on a reading of her destination, not on any designation, so screening your counterparties is no longer the whole of the exercise — your routing, your filings and your stated destination need to tell one story that a third party can verify at a distance. Two operational items need action today — Maersk will not take your empties back across most of the Gulf, and MSC has just shut the Jeddah landbridge for anything not staying in Saudi Arabia. If you were routing upper-Gulf cargo through Jeddah, that plan expired this morning. On the mainlines, the transpacific spike is blank sailings rather than demand and we would not chase it; intra-Asia at a six-week high is the one firming for reasons that will still be true next month.

Sources: Drewry WCI and Cancelled Sailings Tracker (13 and 7 August), Drewry Intra-Asia Container Index (13 August), gCaptain (13 August), Xeneta weekly update (13 August), Freightos via Container News (13 August), Lloyd's List Intelligence Hormuz and Red Sea briefs (12 and 13 August), Container News (8, 11, 13 and 14 August), Al Jazeera (11 and 12 August), The Maritime Executive (10 and 11 August), Portcast port congestion (week 2–8 August, published 9 August), Kuehne+Nagel port operational updates (29 July–4 August and 5–11 August) and Typhoon Dolphin bulletin, Expeditors Middle East operational update (12 August), Linerlytica market pulse week 32 (11 August), Sea-Intelligence Global Liner Performance issue 179 (27 July), Maersk Middle East operational update 41 (12 August), MSC customer advisory (14 August), World Cargo News and AGBI (7, 13 and 14 August), The National (14 August), Insurance Journal (12 August). Where a figure could not be verified it has been left out and said so rather than estimated: the SCFI composite and its Persian Gulf component, August waiting times for Valencia and Piraeus, a precise Hormuz closure day-count, and a Jeddah yard-utilisation reading that appears on an undated carrier page.