ISRAEL LOGISTICS STARTUP BYPASSES HOUTHI RED SEA CRISIS VIA OVERLAND TRADE ROUTE

Map of the land bridge that could see trucks traverse from the port of Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, across Saudi Arabia and Jordan, into Israel, and Egypt. (Trucknet).

Thu 28 December 2023:

This month, Trucknet Enterprise, an Israeli smart transportation company, forged agreements to enable the transfer of goods from the Persian Gulf to Israel via Saudi Arabia and Jordan via an overland trade route. This avoids the Red Sea waterway, which is currently the target of multiple attacks by Houthi militants backed by Iran, Times of Israel reported.

Container ships destined for Israel and connecting to Europe from the Far East are taking a longer route around Africa and the Cape of Good Hope, increasing shipping time by two to four weeks and boosting ship prices by up to $1 million per ship. That is because ships traveling for Israel have already faced higher freight expenses as a result of an additional conflict risk premium assessed by marine insurers.

Earlier this month, Eilat-based Trucknet, which operates a digital marketplace to match importers with transportation companies, signed a cooperation agreement with Emirati-based counterpart Puretrans FZCO and the Dubai port-operating company DP World. The agreement is geared to facilitate the transport of cargo on trucks on a bi-directional land route connecting the ports of Dubai or Bahrain, passing through Saudi Arabia and Jordan, and getting to the port of Haifa, as well as Egypt, where cargo can continue to Europe.

On Sunday, Trucknet signed a similar memorandum of understanding with Alexandria-based logistics services company WWCS which operates as an agency for the management of container transportation from ports and serves the Egyptian market. The cooperation will allow the use of Israel’s border crossings for the transfer of goods on the land route, from the port of Dubai, through Saudi Arabia and Jordan to Israel, and from there, through the Mediterranean Sea or via land, to Egypt, Trucknet said.

Trucknet founder and CEO Hanan Friedman. (Courtesy).

“This week we completed the construction of a land bridge route that will connect the United Arab Emirates to Israel and Egypt,” said Trucknet founder Hanan Friedman.

A pilot to test the land transport line for trucks from the ports of Dubai to Israel has been ongoing in recent weeks.

“The purpose of the route is not to replace the use of the Suez Canal, but to create a complementary express route, which will be used as a bypass route for the Houthi threat in the Red Sea in times of emergency, and will shorten shipping times by 10 days,” said Friedman. “Transit time for cargo on container ships coming from Dubai or Abu Dhabi ports to the Haifa port is about two weeks while unloading and putting the cargo on trucks via the land route will take four days.”

Trucknet said that the land route, which received the necessary approvals from Israel’s Defense Ministry and Israeli authorities, is expected to save 80% of the time the sea route takes, at a lower cost also due to the current high insurance costs levied on shipping companies.

“The cooperation and the high willingness we found among the transport and logistics companies in the Arab countries, proves that the ties that are being forged these days with Israel are in the common interest of all parties, which can and will lead to the transformation of Israel into a significant logistics traffic center on an international scale,” said Friedman.

Saudi Arabia and Israel do not have diplomatic relations, though the White House has been pushing them toward normalizing relations in the months before the war. That’s after the signing of the Abraham Accords, the US-brokered agreement that normalized ties between Israel and the UAE and Bahrain in 2020. Morocco followed suit and normalized relations with Israel soon after.

SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES

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