For nearly four months, one of the world’s most important shipping arteries sat effectively closed. Now it’s reopening — but for food and beverage shipping, that headline is doing a lot less work than it sounds like it should.
The Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway separating Iran from Oman, has been the chokepoint at the centre of the most disruptive period for global container shipping since the pandemic. A framework agreement between the United States and Iran, announced in mid-June, set the stage for a phased reopening. Industry voices are already cautioning that this will be a trickle, not a flood. For F&B brands, distributors, and logistics teams, that distinction is the whole story.
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A Four-Month Shock to the System
The disruption began in late February, when escalating conflict between the US, Israel, and Iran led Iran to effectively close the strait to commercial shipping. The numbers tell the scale of it. Before the crisis, somewhere between 120 and 140 vessels transited Hormuz every single day, carrying roughly a fifth of the world’s oil and a fifth of its liquefied natural gas. At the lowest point, daily transits collapsed to near zero. More than 1,500 vessels and over 20,000 seafarers were left stranded in and around the Gulf, waiting for a resolution that took months to arrive.
For the food and beverage industry specifically, the strait carries far more than energy. Roughly a third of the world’s urea and a substantial share of global ammonia exports — both critical fertiliser inputs — move through this corridor. Sugar refining capacity in the Gulf was also disrupted, with knock-on effects for raw sugar buyers and refined white sugar stocks in multiple regions. The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development issued a formal warning earlier this year about the compounding risk to food security and fertiliser access in developing economies already under fiscal pressure.
Then there’s the part that hits F&B shippers most directly: reefer capacity. One of the world’s largest container carriers suspended all refrigerated bookings into the Middle East entirely, a direct hit to any business moving perishable food, fresh produce, or pharmaceuticals through that corridor. Other major carriers diverted services around the Cape of Good Hope, adding roughly 3,500 nautical miles and up to two weeks of transit time on Asia–Europe lanes. For perishable cargo, those extra two weeks aren’t a scheduling inconvenience. They’re the difference between product arriving in spec and product arriving as a write-off.
To make matters worse, the crisis didn’t stay contained to one chokepoint. Houthi attacks on Red Sea shipping resumed at almost exactly the same time, meaning both of the Middle East’s major maritime corridors were effectively blocked simultaneously, a situation with no recent precedent in commercial shipping history.
The Reopening: Why “Open” Doesn’t Mean “Normal”
News broke in mid-June that the US and Iran had reached an agreement to end hostilities, with the strait expected to begin reopening within days. Brent crude swung wildly on the announcement, spiking sharply before easing back as the deal progressed, a clear sign of just how much uncertainty remains priced into the market.
Shipping industry analysts and maritime associations are united on one point: physical reopening and operational normality are two very different things. Several structural problems stand between “the strait is open” and “your container is moving on schedule.”
Mines still need clearing. Iran is believed to have laid sea mines in parts of the strait during the conflict, and the United States has indicated mine-clearing operations could take months. Until that work is done, vessels will likely be restricted to narrower coastal traffic zones rather than the full width of the waterway, which were never designed to handle normal volumes of shipping traffic.
The bottleneck is physical, not political. With an estimated 500 to 2,000 vessels still waiting to transit, and the strait only wide enough for ships to pass through carefully and largely one at a time, clearing that backlog is expected to take weeks at minimum, regardless of how quickly the diplomatic situation stabilises.
War-risk insurance hasn’t reset. Before the crisis, war-risk insurance for a Hormuz transit cost a fraction of a percent of a vessel’s hull value. During the worst of the disruption, some quotes reportedly reached as high as 5% of hull value. Even with a deal in place, insurers are taking a cautious, wait-and-see approach, and elevated premiums are expected to persist well after the first ships start moving again.
Crews and vessels need recommissioning. Ships that have been idle for months require hull cleaning, equipment checks, and in many cases entirely new crews before they’re fit to sail. This isn’t instantaneous, and it adds friction even for vessels with no other obstacle to departure.
Maritime analysts cited in recent reporting estimate that full crude export volumes alone may not return to pre-crisis levels for four to six months. There is no reason to expect container and reefer capacity to normalise any faster, and several reasons — including the order in which different cargo types and operators are prioritised for early transits — to expect it could lag behind.
What This Means for F&B Supply Chains Right Now
If your business sources ingredients, packaging, or finished products through Middle East-linked routes, or competes for global vessel and reefer capacity more broadly, a few practical realities are worth building into your planning now rather than waiting for things to “settle down.”
Surcharges are stacking, not disappearing. War risk surcharges, emergency bunker adjustments, and emergency freight increases have been layering on top of base container rates for months. Carriers are unlikely to unwind these the moment the strait reopens; expect a gradual, uneven rollback rather than a clean reset. Now is the time to review exactly which surcharges apply to your specific lanes and push for transparency in carrier quotes.
Lead times need a longer buffer than pre-crisis assumptions. Even once routing stabilises, the combination of port congestion at transshipment hubs, crew changes, and a cautious restart means transit times are likely to run longer than they did before February. Safety stock models built on old assumptions should be revisited now.
Reefer capacity will be tight before it’s loose. Carriers that pulled refrigerated capacity out of Middle East routes will be slower to reintroduce it than dry container capacity, simply because the commercial case for redeploying specialised equipment into a still-uncertain corridor is harder to justify. F&B shippers moving perishables through or near this region should expect continued tightness even as headline shipping news turns more optimistic.
Diversification is no longer optional risk management — it’s basic planning. The dual blockade of both Hormuz and the Red Sea this year demonstrated that single-corridor dependency is a structural vulnerability, not a tail risk. Analysts are increasingly recommending that shippers moving time-sensitive or high-value perishable cargo build sea-air hybrid options through alternative hubs into their standing playbook, rather than treating them as an emergency-only fallback.
The broader lesson many in the industry are drawing from the past four months is that geopolitical risk in global shipping is no longer an occasional shock to model around. It’s becoming a standing input into freight cost and lead-time planning, on par with fuel prices and port capacity.
Cold Storage: The Quieter Story Behind the Headlines
While the Hormuz crisis has dominated freight headlines, a separate and equally important shift has been playing out in cold storage and warehousing, one that matters just as much for F&B businesses managing the back end of their supply chains.
Global cold storage capacity has continued expanding briskly, with capacity operated by leading industry members up roughly 10% year-on-year and now exceeding 8 billion cubic feet. Frozen storage remains the dominant format, reflecting its central role in buffering meat, seafood, and prepared foods between production and distribution. Food and beverage products account for roughly half of all cold storage demand, by far the largest end-use segment, ahead of pharmaceuticals and other temperature-sensitive categories.
The more interesting shift is in how that capacity is being built and operated. Automated storage and retrieval systems, once a premium feature reserved for the largest greenfield projects, are becoming a standard consideration even for facility retrofits. Conventional, manually operated cold stores still account for the large majority of existing capacity, but automated facilities are growing far faster than the market as a whole, driven by a combination of rising energy costs, persistent labour shortages in sub-zero environments, and the operational case for reducing door openings and manual handling in frozen conditions.
A few demand drivers are worth flagging for F&B operators thinking about their own cold chain footprint:
E-grocery keeps pulling cold storage closer to cities. Online grocery sales continue climbing toward roughly a fifth of total US grocery sales, and that shift is driving demand for smaller, urban-adjacent micro-fulfilment centres rather than purely large regional hubs. If your distribution model still assumes one big depot per region, it’s worth checking whether your competitors are already moving inventory closer to the consumer.
GLP-1 medications are reshaping protein demand. The rapid growth of GLP-1 weight-loss drugs is changing what people eat, with many users shifting toward higher-protein, more nutrient-dense foods to preserve muscle mass while eating less overall. That’s translating into steady growth in demand for refrigerated, protein-forward products, adding a new and somewhat unexpected driver to cold chain capacity planning.
Pet food is becoming a genuine cold chain category. Frozen and fresh pet food is projected to grow into a multi-billion-dollar segment within the next decade, as pet owners increasingly extend the “better-for-you” instincts they apply to their own diets to their animals. Cold storage operators are beginning to treat this as a distinct planning category rather than a rounding error.
Two players still dominate North American capacity. Lineage Logistics and Americold Realty Trust together control more than 70% of cold storage capacity in North America. For smaller and mid-sized F&B brands, that concentration is worth factoring into contract negotiations and contingency planning alike.
The Practical Takeaway for F&B Brands
None of this means panic. It means treating the next two to three quarters as a transition period rather than a return to “normal,” and building plans accordingly.
For procurement and logistics teams, that looks like: locking in capacity earlier than usual ahead of peak season, building extra time into lead-time models rather than assuming a quick snap-back, keeping a close eye on surcharge line items rather than just headline freight rates, and treating reefer capacity as a constrained resource for at least the next few months. For brands further up the value chain, it means having an honest conversation with your logistics partners about whether your current routing and storage strategy was built for a world that, for now at least, no longer exists.
The Strait of Hormuz reopening is genuinely good news. It is not, on its own, the end of the story for F&B shipping costs and reliability in 2026.
Related: Global Food And Beverage Logistics Industry Report 2026
The global logistics market grew from USD 3.32 trillion in 2025 to USD 3.60 trillion in 2026, with growth expected to continue at a CAGR of 8.71%, projecting the market to reach USD 5.97 trillion by 2032.
Frequently Asked Questions
Will the Strait of Hormuz reopening bring shipping costs back down for food and beverage importers?
Not immediately. While the reopening removes the most acute source of disruption, war-risk insurance premiums, bunker surcharges, and emergency freight increases that built up during the crisis are expected to unwind gradually rather than disappear overnight. Most industry analysts expect surcharge normalisation to lag behind the physical reopening of the strait by weeks or months.
How does the Hormuz crisis specifically affect cold chain and refrigerated (reefer) shipments?
Reefer capacity was hit particularly hard because at least one major carrier suspended all refrigerated bookings into the Middle East during the crisis, and others rerouted vessels around the Cape of Good Hope, adding roughly two weeks of transit time. For perishable food, that extended transit time directly threatens shelf life and product quality, which is why reefer capacity is expected to normalise more slowly than general dry container capacity even after the strait reopens.
Should F&B brands change their supply chain strategy because of this crisis?
Many supply chain analysts argue yes, at least in terms of resilience planning. The simultaneous disruption of both the Strait of Hormuz and the Red Sea this year demonstrated that relying on a single shipping corridor carries real structural risk. Building in alternative routing options, including sea-air hybrid solutions for time-sensitive cargo, and revisiting safety stock assumptions are commonly recommended steps.
Is global cold storage capacity keeping up with food and beverage industry demand?
Broadly, yes. Capacity has grown by roughly 10% year-on-year among leading industry operators, and food and beverage remains the single largest end-use category for cold storage globally. The bigger shift is qualitative rather than quantitative: more of that new capacity is automated, more of it is being built closer to urban centres to support e-grocery, and demand is increasingly shaped by newer factors like GLP-1-driven protein consumption and the growth of frozen pet food.
How long until shipping fully returns to pre-crisis conditions?
There’s no firm consensus, but multiple maritime analysts have suggested that full crude export volumes alone may not return to pre-crisis levels for four to six months, with mine-clearing operations potentially taking even longer. For container and reefer shipping, a similarly gradual timeline is the most realistic working assumption for F&B supply chain planning through the rest of 2026.
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