Shipping giant Maersk has warned it is absorbing a monthly hit of around $500 million (£367 million) from disruption linked to the Iran conflict, as rising freight rates and energy volatility ripple through global supply chains.
The Danish shipping giant, carries roughly around one in five of the world’s seaborne containers, said the disruption is driving a sharp increase in costs in the current quarter and beyond, although it has so far offset the impact by raising prices for customers.
Vincent Clerc, Maersk’s chief executive, said the closure or restriction of key routes such as the Strait of Hormuz could begin to weigh more heavily on global trade and consumer demand if instability continues.
“There is a lot of uncertainty if we look further into the year with respect to what are going to be the secondary impacts of this war – inflation, possibly a reduction in demand,” he told Bloomberg TV.
“There are some question marks about how this is eventually going to flow through the economy.”
The Strait of Hormuz, a vital shipping lane through which around a fifth of global oil supplies pass, has become a focal point for concern among shipping and energy markets, with any sustained disruption expected to feed directly into higher fuel costs and freight rates.
Despite geopolitical pressure, Maersk reported better-than-expected first-quarter results, saying the immediate impact of the Middle East conflict was limited during the period.
However, pre-tax profit fell sharply to $292 million (£214 million), down from $1.43 billion (£1.04 billion) a year earlier, while revenues slipped 2.6 per cent to $12.97 billion (£9.52 billion).
The company left its full-year guidance unchanged, forecasting global container market growth of 2 to 4 per cent, but described the outlook as “highly uncertain”.
Maersk warned that higher energy prices and constraints on trade routes in the Upper Gulf — which accounts for around 6 per cent of global container trade — posed clear downside risks to growth.
Assuming oil prices remain between $90 and $100 a barrel through 2026 and the conflict is resolved quickly, the group still expects modest growth in global container demand, supported by exports from Asia. However, it cautioned that more adverse outcomes “cannot be ruled out”.
Mr Clerc said the company was operating in what was “probably the most comprehensive energy shock in our lifetimes”, adding that maintaining close contact with customers was now critical as supply chains face widespread disruption.
“What is really important is that we stay actually close to our customers, engage with them, because they are faced with a significant amount of disruptions in their supply chain,” he said.
While Maersk has so far managed to pass higher costs on to customers, analysts warn that sustained disruption could eventually feed through into higher inflation and weaker global demand if trade flows slow more broadly.