18MAR

Maersk suspends Gulf container routes

3 min read

11:41UTC

The world's second-largest container line suspended two key services and its Gulf shuttle. CMA CGM and Hapag-Lloyd followed. The war's trade disruption now reaches far beyond oil.

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ConflictDeveloping

Key takeaway

P&I insurance withdrawal is the decisive mechanism: without liability cover, vessels cannot legally sail under most flags or dock at most ports regardless of owner risk appetite, making commercial transit structurally impossible rather than merely costly.

Maersk suspended two container shipping services on Friday — FM1, connecting the Far East to the Middle East, and ME11, connecting the Middle East to Europe — along with its Gulf shuttle service, halted 'until further notice.' CMA CGM and Hapag-Lloyd took similar steps. Maersk is the world's second-largest container shipping company; CMA CGM and Hapag-Lloyd rank among the top five globally.

The suspensions follow, rather than lead, the insurance collapse. Every major P&I club cancelled war risk cover effective midnight 5 March . Without insurance, commercial vessels cannot legally enter most ports; without port access, container services have no function. Brent crude reached $92.69 on Friday , and VLCC freight rates hit an all-time record of $423,736 per day , but these figures capture only the energy dimension. Container shipping carries electronics, pharmaceuticals, machinery, textiles, and food. The FM1 route alone connects East Asian manufacturing centres to Gulf consumer markets serving more than 50 million people.

The distinction matters because oil disruptions have established policy responses — strategic reserves, emergency IEA releases, demand rationing. Container trade disruptions do not. A Jordanian hospital waiting for medical equipment from China, a Saudi construction firm awaiting steel from South Korea, an Egyptian food importer dependent on Asian rice — none have a strategic petroleum reserve equivalent. The $18 million in WHO health supplies stranded at Dubai's emergency logistics hub , with a further $8 million in inbound shipments blocked, is one visible example of a pattern replicated across thousands of commercial relationships.

Shipping consultancy Simpson Spence Young had already assessed Navy convoys as 'unlikely in the near-term' given simultaneous combat demands . Even a ceasefire would not restore commercial shipping immediately; insurers require reassessments that typically take weeks. The trade disruption now operates on its own timeline, decoupled from the military campaign that caused it. Three of the world's largest container lines have made the same calculation independently: The Gulf is commercially uninsurable, and no government has offered a credible alternative.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

Maersk, CMA CGM, and Hapag-Lloyd together move a large share of the world's containerised cargo — the boxes on ships carrying electronics, clothing, car parts, and food. They have stopped sending ships through the Gulf because their insurance has been cancelled. Ship insurance is not optional: without it, ships cannot legally enter most ports or sail under most national flags. So even if a company wanted to keep running, it legally cannot. This is also distinct from the oil crisis: oil tankers and container ships are different vessel types, and the disruption now hits the full range of manufactured goods people buy, not only fuel.

Deep Analysis

Synthesis

The simultaneous P&I withdrawal, carrier suspension, and China-Iran preferential passage negotiation (Event 6) are three facets of the same underlying dynamic: the global shipping system is sorting itself into geopolitically affiliated lanes in real time. What is emerging is not a temporary disruption but the prototype of a bifurcated maritime trade architecture — one Western-flagged lane that is commercially uninsurable in the Gulf, one Chinese-linked lane that remains operationally functional.

Root Causes

P&I club war-risk withdrawal follows the Lloyd's Joint War Committee's designation process, which is driven by actuarial models rather than diplomatic considerations — once a zone is designated, the market exits regardless of geopolitical preferences. The concentration of global container capacity across three alliances (Ocean Alliance, 2M, THE Alliance) means suspension decisions by Maersk propagate rapidly across the industry because all competitors face identical insurance conditions simultaneously.

What could happen next?

Consequence
Gulf petrochemical and manufacturing exporters — including Saudi SABIC and UAE free-zone industrial operators — face effective export paralysis as container carriers exit and no alternative logistics infrastructure scales quickly enough.
Immediate · Assessed
Risk
Asian electronics supply chains routing components through UAE and Bahrain distribution hubs face compounding delays; manufacturers without 60-day inventory buffers may face production stoppages.
Short term · Suggested
Precedent
The speed of commercial exit from the Gulf — faster than during any previous regional crisis — normalises supply-chain fragility to geopolitical risk and accelerates corporate investment in diversification away from single-chokepoint dependencies.
Long term · Assessed
Opportunity
Air freight carriers and overland China-Europe rail routes via Central Asia stand to capture diverted cargo volumes at significant premium, benefiting logistics operators with capacity outside the Gulf corridor.
Short term · Suggested

Source Landscape

This story draws on mixed-leaning sources from United States and South Africa

United States

South Africa

LeftRight

The 2023–2024 Houthi Red Sea campaign is the nearest structural precedent: sustained threat to a major shipping lane forced Maersk and peers off the Red Sea route within weeks, adding 10–14 days via the Cape of Good Hope and increasing per-voyage fuel costs by approximately $1m. Spot container freight rates on Asia-Europe lanes tripled within six weeks of sustained diversion.

The Hormuz closure is structurally more severe because no equivalent bypass exists for Gulf-origin cargo.

Why it’s relevant now

Unlike the Red Sea crisis — where the Cape of Good Hope diversion was costly but operationally viable — a Hormuz closure offers no bypass for cargo originating in or destined for Gulf ports. The shipping industry's response options are therefore more constrained, making duration of disruption, not its scale, the critical variable.

Asia-Europe container spot rates rose from approximately $1,500/TEU pre-Houthi crisis to over $5,000/TEU at peak in early 2024 on diverted capacity. Hormuz closure affects a distinct but overlapping set of routes with no rerouting option for Gulf-origin cargo, suggesting Middle East-specific lane rates could exceed that prior peak.

Gulf petrochemical exports — which move in containers and specialised vessels, not bulk tankers — face a separate disruption channel entirely absent from oil price indices, affecting downstream plastics, fertilisers, and industrial chemicals globally.

Lloyd's Market Association Joint War Committee listing protocols have historically required a 7-day notice period before exclusion becomes effective; the speed of coverage withdrawal in the current crisis suggests the JWC acted on the conflict's opening exchanges rather than waiting for incident accumulation — a procedural acceleration without recent precedent.

Drewry Shipping Consultants has modelled that a 30-day Hormuz closure generates approximately $50–70bn in global trade disruption, roughly three to four times the impact of the Ever Given blockage in 2021.

Sources:CNBC·PYMNTS·Business Day SA

Mentions:VLCC →Persian Gulf →China →Dubai →Brent Crude →Time →Maersk →Strait of Hormuz →CMA CGM →

First Reported In

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CNBC· 7 Mar 2026

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Causes and effects

Caused by

Analysts warn of $100-120 oil

P&I insurance withdrawal and effective commercial closure of Hormuz forced Maersk and other major carriers to suspend Middle East routes

Occurred 6 Mar 2026

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P&I deadline passes; Strait sealed

Expiration of P&I war risk coverage and absence of alternative insurance or Navy convoy escorts left no viable path for commercial transit

Occurred 5 Mar 2026

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This Event

Maersk suspends Gulf container routes

The suspension of container shipping services by three of the world's largest carriers means the war's economic disruption extends to manufactured goods, food, and raw materials — not only crude oil. Any business that ships goods through or to the Middle East is affected.

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