DP World CEO Warns Hormuz Disruption Will Keep Pushing Up Global Prices

Group CEO Yuvraj Narayan says rerouting cargo away from the Strait of Hormuz onto costlier land routes is a stopgap that will eventually feed through into consumer prices worldwide, with Jebel Ali volumes down more than 90%.

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By Principle Post StaffPublished October 30, 2026

A DP World executive at an industry conference · Source: Anindito Mukherjee/Bloomberg

DP World's Group Chief Executive Officer, Yuvraj Narayan, has warned that the prolonged disruption to shipping through the Strait of Hormuz is driving up logistics costs in a way that will eventually show up in consumer prices well beyond the Gulf region. The warning comes as the Dubai-based ports operator has had to reroute large volumes of cargo away from the strait, a vital chokepoint for global trade that has seen shipping traffic collapse amid ongoing Iran-related tensions.

Jebel Ali volumes down more than 90%

The scale of the disruption is visible at DP World's own flagship facility: Jebel Ali, its flagship port in Dubai, handled 15.6 million twenty-foot equivalent units of cargo in 2025, but just 374,000 TEU in the second quarter of 2026, a drop of more than 90%. To keep goods moving, DP World has shifted a significant share of its logistics onto trucking routes that bypass the strait entirely, even though that land-based alternative sacrifices the scale and efficiency of ocean shipping.

Narayan said the company's shift toward slower, lower-volume land logistics is proving expensive, running four to five times costlier than the ocean routes it replaced in some cases — costs that eventually have to be absorbed somewhere in the supply chain.

Pressure building on an already-strained consumer

"The longer disruption persists, the greater the likelihood that higher costs feed through into prices, at a time when households are already living with elevated prices and central banks are trying to return inflation to target," Narayan said. The comments add a logistics executive's voice to a chorus of warnings from central bankers and economists about how geopolitical disruptions to shipping lanes can reignite inflationary pressure just as policymakers have been trying to bring it back under control.

DP World has also reported rising demand at its Red Sea hubs as shippers look for alternative routes around the Arabian Peninsula, suggesting the company sees the current disruption pattern as durable enough to justify shifting capacity rather than simply waiting for Hormuz traffic to normalize.