Egypt emerges as a transit hub for Europe-Gulf freight
Egypt’s high hopes of ocean shipping lines returning to Suez in force were brought to ...
A new overland Gulf trade corridor may have been expedited by the war in Iran, but operators need to resolve their capacity issues and add more for the route to prosper, long-term.
During an IRU-convened event on land transport across the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, Saudi Automobile & Touring Association executive manager Hasan Almanasif said those operators were “not stepping up to the plate”.
Having praised rapid collaboration between GCC countries to improve customs and border processes for trucks in the region, Mr Almanasif said: “What we need to see now is the lone operators taking advantage of the opportunity.”
He said that opportunity had been pronounced, with demand for trucking capacity surging some 30% since the war began, with prices, in turn, having quadrupled in some cases.
With hauliers contending with their own spiking costs, as fuel supply problems provoked by the war eat into their profit margins, there have also been difficulties in finding not only trucks, but drivers.
Initially there had been concern about bottlenecks at the region’s ports, but Achraf Ellili, CEO of Saudi-based Flow Progressive Logistics, told those participating in the IRU event the bigger issues were driver and fleet utilisation, and acquiring fuel.
He said: “Let us not waste the opportunity this crisis has given us. Our corridor, the one that we have created, will continue to be there.”
And he added that, with shippers having experienced the route’s reliability, he expected them to “keep a percentage of their volumes moving this way, now it has been stress tested at scale”.
He said: “It is optionally now viable. Shippers require a dual corridor strategy and the GCC is now able to offer this. Jebel Ali will remain world class, but it’ll no longer be the only gateway.”
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