{"id":60933,"date":"2026-04-10T13:23:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-10T13:23:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/60933\/"},"modified":"2026-04-10T13:23:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-10T13:23:08","slug":"dhl-says-shipping-fallout-from-hormuz-strait-could-last-six-months","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/60933\/","title":{"rendered":"DHL Says Shipping Fallout from Hormuz Strait Could Last Six Months"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tDHL<\/a> expects shipping through the Strait of Hormuz<\/a> to take at least four to six months to normalize, despite a tentative but tenuous U.S.-Iran ceasefire<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a briefing held Wednesday, Tobias Maier, CEO of DHL<\/a> Global Forwarding\u2019s Middle East and Africa unit, told customers \u201cnothing has dramatically changed\u201d in recent days regarding a possible return of container shipping<\/a> to the strait.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe rough guideline in the industry has always been \u2018one week of disruption will take one month.\u2019 Based on where we stand today, almost six weeks into the crisis, we are probably somewhere in the range of four to six months before a return to normal,\u201d said Maier. \u201cThe message to customers and everybody involved should be to plan for disruption, chaos and delays, changes in schedule and extra costs to exist for a longer period.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tMaier said the top priority will be evacuating vessels that are trapped in the Persian Gulf. Approximately 820 commercial ships are still in the gulf as of Thursday morning, according to MarineTraffic.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe don\u2019t expect that there is a massive capacity becoming available for services into the gulf, toward Dubai, Jebel Ali and Abu Dhabi,\u201d said Maier. \u201cIf anything, it\u2019s really about evacuating vessels so that they can help facilitate global trade.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAlthough the terms of the ceasefire were contingent on the Hormuz remaining open, Iran\u2019s naval forces have warned that ships still need permission to pass through. Confusion has surrounded the ceasefire, with Israel continuing strikes on Lebanon despite Iran\u2019s insistence that the country was included in the truce.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a statement on Iranian state television, Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei said Iran will take \u201cmanagement of the Strait of Hormuz<\/a> to a new stage,\u201d without providing details.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Iranian navy released a map late Wednesday indicating it may have mined the strait. The map outlined designated alternate shipping lanes vessels should use to transit safely<\/p>\n

\n\tThere has been no meaningful increase in traffic through the waterway since the two-week break in hostilities was first announced Tuesday night.<\/p>\n

\n\tOn Wednesday, only five ships sailed the conflict-ridden strait, per vessel transponder data observed by MarineTraffic.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cFears of additional attacks have kept most operators in a wait-and-see mode, at least until initial findings emerge from the proposed talks in Islamabad on April 10,\u201d said Ana Subasic, trade risk analyst at MarineTraffic, in a Thursday update. \u201cThe area remains very high risk, and cargo movements continue to be economically unviable.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tFollowing in the footsteps of fellow ocean carrier Hapag-Lloyd, which itself expects normal traffic in its network to resume in six to eight weeks, Japan\u2019s Mitsui O.S.K Lines said it is waiting for safety reassurances before it gives the go-ahead for its ships to exit the Persian Gulf.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s not yet clear how this ceasefire \u2060will be implemented in the relevant waters,\u201d Mitsui O.S.K Lines president and CEO Jotaro Tamura told Reuters, adding that the company was anticipating guidance from the Japanese government.<\/p>\n

\n\tThree of the company\u2019s oil tankers crossed the strait earlier this month.<\/p>\n

\n\tAs carriers wait out the situation, congestion remains an issue at surrounding ports in the region, as well as in south Asia. The U.A.E.\u2019s Khor Fakkan Port began to see congestion after operations were disrupted for two days, with a 100 percent congestion ratio on Wednesday, according to data from Xeneta. Oman\u2019s Sohar Port had an 83.3 percent congestion ratio.<\/p>\n

\n\tXeneta\u2019s congestion ratio calculates the number of ships waiting to call at the port divided by the total number of vessels already docked.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe are seeing various cases of vessels are \u2018cutting and running,\u2019\u201d said Hunain Khan, the regional head of full container load at DHL<\/a>\u2019s Middle Eastern forwarding segment, during the webinar. \u201cThat means they are unable to discharge all their cargo at Khor Fakkan or Sohar, and are then expected to bring the containers back to [ports like] Nhava Sheva or Colombo<\/a> or even all the way back to their origin, depending on the carrier\u2019s decision. The congestion situation remains relatively tight.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe conflict created another knock-on effect, where there is a present imbalance of where containers are placed across the regional supply chain, according to Maier.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe still have a lot of dislocated containers,\u201d Maier said. \u201cWe need shipping lines to redo their schedules again. That\u2019s not going to resolve in one or two weeks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DHL expects shipping through the Strait of Hormuz to take at least four to six months to normalize,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":60934,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[3676,23243,102,23244,101],"class_list":{"0":"post-60933","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-strait-of-hormuz","8":"tag-container-shipping","9":"tag-dhl","10":"tag-hormuz","11":"tag-ocean-freight","12":"tag-strait-of-hormuz"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116380631212730844","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60933","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60933"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60933\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60934"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60933"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60933"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60933"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}