Client
European freight-forwarding group · DCs in NL, DE, IT · Gulf contract logistics
The Event
On 20 July 2026 Houthi forces declared a naval blockade of Saudi Arabia. Bab el-Mandeb transits fell from 319 a week to 273. Hormuz was already down from 100+ vessels a day to roughly five — the first time both EMEA chokepoints degraded at once, invalidating every plan that named one as the other’s fallback.
What the Client Was Facing
- Both routes failed together. Primary/secondary reroute logic broke; real multi-modal contingency was needed.
- Visibility went dark. 63% of Hormuz transits ran with AIS off — carrier ETAs stopped being reliable inputs.
- War-risk cover repriced. 1–3% → 7.5–10% of hull value: $7.5–10m on one transit of a $100m ship.
How Datasurfr Helped
- Monitor Risk Watch by corridor, not country — Bab el-Mandeb, Gulf of Aden, Suez approach, Hormuz, each severity-filtered.
- Assess DCs, warehouses, port agents and in-transit crew mapped; proximity alerts showed who sat inside each incident radius.
- Decide Scenario sets over five years of corridor data set Cape and Suez routings with pre-agreed switch triggers.
- Act Customer advisories and two-way crew check-ins from the same platform — no copy-paste between systems.
Impact
- Incidents reached the control tower ahead of carrier notification
- One picture replaced threat feed, traveller tracking, alerts and spreadsheets
- Full crew and port-agent accountability on every escalation
“The value was never early warning alone. It was holding one picture across two failing corridors — and acting on it from the same screen.”
