Gemini’s Asia-Gulf loop returns, into the Gulf’s busiest bypass port

Gemini’s Asia-Gulf comeback runs straight into the Khor Fakkan queue
Maersk and Hapag-Lloyd restart their direct Far East-Middle East service on Saturday 17 October. It is the first time the Gemini Cooperation partners have run the loop since they pulled it on 27 March. Maersk markets it as FM1. Hapag-Lloyd calls it AGX.
The first ship is the 8,400 TEU Maersk Athabasca, The Loadstar reports. (TEU, or twenty-foot equivalent unit, is the standard measure of container capacity.) It leaves Qingdao on 17 October and is due at Khor Fakkan on 16 November, according to Maersk’s customer notice. The rotation is Qingdao, Ningbo, Tanjung Pelepas, Khor Fakkan, Singapore and back to Qingdao.
What is missing is Jebel Ali. The old loop called at Dubai’s main port, inside the Strait of Hormuz. The new one stops at Khor Fakkan, on the UAE’s east coast, outside the Strait.

What we think it means

Our view is simple. A direct mainline call is good news for Gulf importers who have spent more than six months relying on relays and feeders. (A mainline service is a long-haul loop with big ships. A feeder is a smaller ship that shuttles boxes between a hub and smaller ports.) But this new capacity is pointed at the single most stretched port in the region.
We think the pinch point for Asia-Gulf cargo is no longer the ocean leg. It is the berth, the yard and the truck gate at Khor Fakkan. Adding a Gemini call makes that pinch tighter before it makes it looser.

What the carriers and forwarders are saying

The warnings are coming from the people running the cargo.
Kuehne+Nagel’s port update for 7 to 13 October says: “Cargo diversions continue to drive congestion at Khor Fakkan and Fujairah”. It adds that “Congestion, longer dwell times and lead-time volatility remain across regional supply chains.” Dwell time is how long a box sits in the terminal before it leaves.
The Loadstar reported on 14 October that Kuehne+Nagel calls Khor Fakkan and Fujairah the “main pressure points in the region”. The forwarder said the two ports are “taking on a lot of the volumes shifted to ports outside the Strait of Hormuz in recent months”. Its outlook, as quoted by The Loadstar: “Looking ahead, we expect Khor Fakkan and Fujairah to remain under significant pressure in the coming weeks.”
Maersk itself is not hiding the problem. According to The Loadstar, its operational update cites “vessel congestion and limited berth availability at Khor Fakkan”, alongside high yard use, road congestion and long truck waits. The Loadstar reports Maersk is relocating some boxes to an inland depot at Sajja and is planning for the possible redirection of some shipments to Jebel Ali.
Expeditors is more measured. It said that “UAE gateways remain largely unaffected and outside the Strait risk area”, The Loadstar reports. But it also said Khor Fakkan and Fujairah are “showing signs of congestion”.
The sharpest line came from forwarders who spoke to The Loadstar. They said hinterland trucking capacity has been “hoovered up” by “forwarders with the biggest pockets, rather than shipments with the most need”.

How Khor Fakkan got here

Khor Fakkan was not built for this. Eirik Hooper, associate director of ports and terminals at Drewry, said, as quoted by The Loadstar on 13 October: “This is a facility that was built as a transhipment terminal, so it didn’t really even have a truck gate.” Transhipment means boxes arrive on one ship and leave on another, without touching a road.
Hooper said Gulftainer, the terminal operator, “has taken weekly throughput from around 8,000 teu to 65,000 teu, a 700% increase”, with a weekly target of 100,000 TEU “expected within the next month or two”. Truck movements went “from about 100 truck movements a day to 8,500”, he said.
That growth has come in waves. In April, The Loadstar reported about 5,000 daily truck movements and a new 45-acre yard able to hold up to 1,800 trucks. Gulftainer’s group CEO Farid Belbouab said then: “Waiting times are down.” He added: “The system is stabilising.”
It did not stay stable. On 23 August, Container News reported that RCL had put a Port Congestion Surcharge of $450 per box on import cargo to Khor Fakkan. The carrier said vessel waiting times at the port were over seven days, Container News reported. The consignee has to pay locally before release.
Meanwhile, the price of getting a box into the Gulf has soared. The Loadstar reported that Xeneta spot rates to Khor Fakkan rose 479% between 28 February and early September, to $10,626 per 40ft container. (A spot rate is the price for a one-off shipment, not a contract.) Container Trades Statistics confirmed to The Loadstar that its index for August, covering Asia-Middle East rates, was up 130% on August 2025, its highest ever level.
Xeneta chief analyst Peter Sand said, as quoted by The Loadstar: “The increased cost is in addition to longer transit times and worse reliability, but while the Strait of Hormuz remains effectively closed to container vessels, shippers have little other option to get their goods into the Gulf region.”

Why one more loop matters

The old version of this service ran eight ships averaging 10,900 TEU each, according to Xeneta’s eeSea database, as reported by The Loadstar. The relaunch opens with a smaller ship, but it is still a mainline vessel.
Our own rough sum: a full 8,400 TEU ship equals about 13% of the 65,000 TEU Khor Fakkan now handles in a week. Not every box on board will be for Khor Fakkan. But that is a big new chunk for a terminal already short of berth space. And the boxes that do land all need a truck.
The region’s road network is already doing work the sea used to do. The Loadstar reported that in late August, DP World said it had moved 500,000 TEU through Gulf overland corridors since the beginning of March. DP World had also bought a further 700 trucks for land bridges. A land bridge is a road or rail link that replaces a sea leg, here carrying boxes from ports outside the Strait to destinations inside it. Those corridors are what keep Gulf cargo moving. They are also why truck supply, not ship supply, now decides how fast a Khor Fakkan box reaches its final destination.
The Loadstar’s 13 October report also links the switch away from Jebel Ali to a wider fall in volumes going directly to Dubai and Abu Dhabi. In our view, the trade has already rerouted around the war, and Gemini is following the cargo, not leading it.
Maersk’s message to customers is that the relaunch “provides customers with additional direct ocean connectivity to Khor Fakkan”. That is true for the ocean leg. It says nothing about how fast boxes leave the port.
It is also worth noting what the carriers did not say. Maersk’s notice gives no transit times and no vessel count. It says only that the partners “will continue to closely monitor the security situation across the Middle East.”

What forwarders should do now

Here is what we think this means in practice.
Expect longer dwell. A full yard means slower discharge, slower gate-out and more boxes moved to off-dock sites like Sajja. Each extra move can add cost and a day or two.
Watch D&D. Demurrage is the fee for leaving a full box in the terminal too long. Detention is the fee for keeping the carrier’s box outside too long. Both build fast when trucks are scarce. Check free time on every Khor Fakkan booking, and ask in writing who pays for a carrier-led move to an inland depot.
Book trucks before the ship sails. If capacity goes to the biggest buyers, small and mid-sized forwarders need confirmed haulage before arrival, not after. Shippers with urgent cargo should be ready to pay for it.
Price in surcharges. RCL has already set a $450 congestion charge. Quotes to Khor Fakkan should say whether congestion, storage or depot-move charges are included.
Keep an eye on alternatives. Kuehne+Nagel’s update expects some volume to shift toward Jeddah, Aqaba and Salalah as conditions at Jeddah improve. For Saudi-bound cargo, a Red Sea gateway may now be faster than a long truck run from the UAE east coast. For Dubai consignees, Maersk’s own plan to redirect some shipments to Jebel Ali is worth asking about.
Plan around 16 November. That is when the Maersk Athabasca is due. The weeks either side are when Khor Fakkan’s yard will feel the first FM1 and AGX volumes on top of everything else.

Our prediction

We expect the first FM1/AGX calls to land in a port that is still congested. Our call: by the end of December 2026, Maersk or Hapag-Lloyd will either announce a congestion or depot-transfer charge for Khor Fakkan, or formally move part of the loop’s Gulf discharge to Jebel Ali or another port. We also expect Asia-Gulf spot rates to stay well above pre-war levels through the end of Q4, because new ship capacity does nothing for a full yard and a short supply of trucks.

Sources

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• The Loadstar — Gemini relaunch likely to add to congestion pressure at Khor Fakkan, 14 Oct 2026 \
• The Loadstar — Gemini to relaunch Asia-Middle East Loop, but drops Jebel Ali call, 13 Oct 2026 \
• Maersk — FM1 service to re-launch on Gemini Network: Asia – Middle East, 13 Oct 2026 \
• Kuehne+Nagel — Port operational updates (7 Oct - 13 Oct 2026), 13 Oct 2026 \
• Container News — RCL introduces congestion surcharge for Khor Fakkan shipments, 23 Aug 2026 \
• The Loadstar — Supply chains go multimodal as Gulf ports expand truck facilities, 15 Apr 2026