French shipping and logistics major CMA CGM announced this week that it would be deploying alternative transport solutions connecting a number of Gulf countries affected by Iran's "special conditions" on the Hormuz Strait.
This comes as the war between Iran and US-Israel forces nears three weeks, with Iran's "special conditions" preventing US and allied vessels from transiting through the embattled strait, Tehran mulling taxes for vessels travelling through it, and US President Donald Trump considering opening it up by military means.
"The CMA CGM Group is ... deploying alternative multimodal solutions combining maritime, rail and road transport in order to maintain the fluidity of logistics flows, despite the situation in Hormuz," the company wrote in a statement.
The company's multimodal solution involves three alternative logistics corridors:
Secure logistics corridors via the UAE
Located south from the Hormuz Strait, this corridor uses Khor Fakkan, Fujairah and Sohar as strategic entry points for cargo flows coming into the Gulf.
From these ports, CMA CGM is capable of transporting that cargo to various important hubs in the UAE, such as Khalifa, Jebel Ali, and Sharjah. It has also put in place arrangements to transport the cargo to other countries bordering the Arabian Gulf through a combination of land and maritime transport.
An alternative road corridor via Saudi Arabia
For cargo coming to the Jeddah Port on the Red Sea, the shipping major is deploying road corridors—with or without a maritime connection in between—to transport the cargo to Saudi Arabia (Dammam), UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, and Iraq.
This setup also provides for cargo flow to the Mediterranean and Asia without exposure to the Hormuz Strait.
An alternative road corridor via Oman
For cargo coming to Oman's ports, the company has facilitated road connections to the UAE, with further links to the upper Gulf via a mixture of road and feeder services.