Oman ends APM Terminals’ Salalah concession in 2028

Oman is taking Salalah back. Maersk and Hapag-Lloyd have two years to work out what that costs them
Oman has told the operator of Salalah, its deepsea transhipment hub, that its concessions will end on 1 November 2028 and will not be renewed. APM Terminals, Maersk’s port business, owns 30% of the operator, Salalah Port Services. The company said the ministry’s notice was blunt: “The notification further states that the decision not to extend the concession agreement is final and unconditional.” The Loadstar reported the news on 20 October.
A concession is a long lease. A government owns the port and a private company runs it for a fixed term, takes the revenue and pays for the equipment. APM Terminals signed a 30-year operating concession in 1996 “on a build-operate-transfer basis”, meaning it built the terminal, runs it, and hands it back at the end.
Our view: this is not a contract that quietly ran out. Oman is taking back a strategic asset at the moment it has the most leverage, while Salalah is busier and more valuable than it has ever been. Maersk and Hapag-Lloyd, which lean on the port as a Gemini hub, are the ones exposed.

Why the timing tells you what Oman is doing

Salalah is booming. The company handled 4.3m TEU (twenty-foot equivalent units, the standard container measure) in 2025, up from 3.3m TEU in 2024, according to its annual results as reported by Muscat Daily, which puts the rise at 31%. Handling capacity is now up to 6m TEU, The Loadstar says.
The growth has carried into 2026. First-half revenue rose about 20% to OR50.7m ($132m), and container traffic rose 15%, according to The Loadstar. The paper links that growth to more ship calls after the Hormuz closure. With the Gulf harder to reach, Salalah’s position on the Arabian Sea, outside the strait, has become more valuable. CFO Farooq Zuberi said July and August volumes were also “very strong”.
The company wanted to stay. In March it said it was “currently in discussions with the Omani government on extending its concession,” the Oman Observer reported. The paper also said extensions in the industry “often span 20–30 years”. The company sought an extension and got a no, with no room to negotiate.
In our view, a government does not turn down a busy, profitable operator by accident. Either Oman wants a bigger share of the money for itself, through its state logistics group Asyad, or it wants a new partner on better terms. The ministry has not said which. The Loadstar notes the government has not yet said whether it will run a formal tender for a new operator after November 2028.

Who owns what, and why it matters

The Loadstar lists the shareholders. APM Terminals holds 30% and Asyad holds 20%. The Social Cohesion Fund holds 10%, and local and institutional investors hold the remaining 40%. The largest institutional investor is reportedly Soros Fund Management, with just under 20%.
So the state already owns a fifth of the operator through Asyad. The concession, though, is the right to run the port, and that right goes back to the government in 2028. Shareholders will own a company with nothing to operate unless something new is agreed. The board said: “The board of directors will consider the notification and assess its potential impact on the company.”
For the shipping lines, the issue is control. Salalah hosts 18 liner services, and only two of them do not involve Maersk or Hapag-Lloyd, according to The Loadstar. Gemini, the network the two lines launched together, is built around a small number of hub ports where they control the terminal. The Loadstar notes both lines have continually stressed the importance of controlling the main transhipment hubs. Losing the operator’s seat at one of them is a direct hit to that model.

The awkward two years

The ministry expects the current operator to keep running Salalah until the concession ends. So ships will keep calling, cranes will keep working, and nothing changes on your schedules tomorrow.
The risk sits in the gap. An operator with a fixed end date has little reason to spend money it cannot earn back. We already have evidence of this at Salalah. About four years ago, the port leased roughly $200m of equipment instead of buying it, because of “the looming expiry of the current concession in 2028,” according to the Oman Observer. Management said clarity on an extension would let it buy that equipment or extend the leases, and fund more expansion. That clarity has now arrived, and it is the wrong answer for them.
There are also running costs. The Loadstar reports that first-half profitability fell sharply. Causes included repairing a crane damaged in an Iranian drone attack, a 72% jump in fuel costs and the need for more terminal staff. In March, after the crane was damaged, Maersk told customers it was working with Omani authorities to restore operations in a phased and gradual manner. “The affected area is limited, and as operations resume, the port will undergo steps to restore full capacity,” the Oman Observer reported.
Put that together. You have a port running hot on diverted Hormuz traffic, carrying higher repair, fuel and staffing costs, with leased kit and an operator that now knows it is leaving. In our view, that is a recipe for congestion if volumes keep climbing, and for slow fixes when things break.

What happened last time a government in the region took back a terminal

The nearest precedent is Djibouti. In February 2018, it ended DP World’s 30-year concession at the Doraleh Container Terminal, which had opened in 2008. The government announced the “unilateral termination with immediate effect of the concession contract awarded to DP World,” citing “the higher interests of the nation, in particular those relating to the sovereignty of the state,” Maritime Executive reported. Doraleh was then run by a government-owned terminal management company. DP World went to arbitration in London.
Oman is doing this differently, and more cleanly. It is not tearing up a contract early. It is letting one expire and giving more than two years’ notice. There should be no legal fight over seizure. Doraleh shows something useful, though: governments in this region are willing to take terminals back when they think the strategic value is high.
The lesson for Maersk is that Salalah’s future is now a negotiation. The old contract no longer protects it. The lesson for forwarders is that the port will almost certainly keep operating. The open questions are who runs it and on what terms.

What this means for forwarders and shippers

Here is our read for anyone moving boxes through the Middle East, the Indian subcontinent or East Africa.
First, no immediate routing changes. Salalah stays in the Gemini network through 2028 because there is nowhere obvious to move the 16 services that involve Maersk or Hapag-Lloyd in a hurry, least of all while Hormuz is closed. Don’t reroute or reprice on this news alone.
Second, watch service levels at Salalah closely through 2027. If you have cargo transhipping there, track dwell times and missed connections. An operator heading for the exit, with leased equipment and higher costs, may not add capacity when volumes rise. Build that into lead times for customers on feeder routes through the port.
Third, read your 2027 and 2028 contracts with the hub in mind. Long-term deals that run past November 2028 assume a network that may not exist in its current form. Ask carriers how they would handle a hub change. Make sure your terms cover rerouting costs and transit-time changes.
Fourth, expect terminal charges to be in play. A new operator, or the state itself, will set its own tariffs. Those are the fees the terminal charges per box. If Oman wants more of Salalah’s revenue, some of that may reach shippers through terminal handling charges.
Fifth, watch who turns up to bid. A port this busy, with 6m TEU of capacity, will attract the big terminal groups and possibly rival shipping lines. If a carrier outside Gemini wins control, Maersk and Hapag-Lloyd would be guests at a hub they built their network around. That would push them to shift services over time, and it would change transhipment options for everyone else.

Our prediction

We expect Oman to announce a tender or name a new operating partner for Salalah by the end of Q2 2027. We think Asyad will hold a bigger stake in whatever comes next than the 20% it has today.
We also expect Maersk to bid to stay rather than walk away. It would accept worse terms and a smaller share of the profits to keep its operating role. Salalah is too important to Gemini to give up without a fight.
On services, we expect no Gemini service to drop Salalah as its main regional hub before the end of 2027. If Maersk has not secured a new deal by then, expect the first network changes to be announced in early 2028, ahead of the November handover.

Sources

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• The Loadstar — APM Terminals to lose control of Salalah transhipment hub in 2028, 20 Oct 2026 \
• Muscat Daily — Salalah Port records strong growth in container, cargo volumes in 2025, 23 Feb 2026 \
• Oman Observer — Salalah Port in talks for extension of concession beyond 2028, 31 Mar 2026 \
• Maritime Executive — Djibouti Terminates DP World’s Concession at Doraleh, 22 Feb 2018