Plans Made at Bedtime, Obsolete by Morning

By Luke King

Geopolitical instability is forcing operators to reroute vessels, rewrite contracts and rethink risk at an unprecedented pace.

At Breakbulk Middle East’s “Geopolitics in Motion” panel session, industry leaders shared how they’re adapting to an era where plans made at bedtime are often thrown out a few hours later.

The discussion, moderated by Robin Mills, CEO of Qamar Energy, brought together logistics professionals from across the supply chain to explore the operational impacts of today’s hot spots, from Red Sea disruptions to the shadow fleet challenge.

For Akshay Anand, group CEO of ABSA Al Barrak Group, the most challenging hours aren’t at 10 p.m. when he goes to sleep, they’re in the middle of the night. “I wake up in the morning literally throwing last night’s plans away,” he said. “Geopolitically, I think these are probably the most trying times we’ve ever lived through.”

That unpredictability extends across the industry. Harald Nijhof, CEO of Aqaba Container Terminal, described his morning ritual: “At six o’clock I wake up and find myself going through the news sites wondering, what does the world look like today? I say we’re now all in a kind of corporate gym, a fitness regime, because we need to be extremely agile.”

Aqaba’s experience illustrates rapid shifts in trade patterns. The terminal saw vessel calls double after the Red Sea became a dead end, though with smaller feeders replacing mainline services. Nijhof noted emerging opportunities alongside challenges, with Syria sanctions relief contributing to volumes multiplying sixfold and helping Aqaba reach 1 million TEU for the first time in 2025.

Denis Bandura, managing director of BBC Chartering UAE, emphasized reputation management amid constant flux. “We need to keep developing the image of safety, of a responsible, flexible carrier that can do anything, even in these conditions,” he said.

Abdul Fahl, TTMS Gulf director at TT Club, outlined three sources of uncertainty: geopolitical instability, sanctions and trade wars, and rapid compliance evolution. “The biggest enemy for an insurance company is unpredictability and uncertainty,” he said, warning that legitimate claims can go unpaid if sanctioned entities are involved.

Some insurers are moving to shorter policy periods. “We see this already in some parts of the world,” Fahl said, noting certain Red Sea areas became uninsurable through Lloyd’s market, requiring state intervention to protect trade flows.

Captain Anuj Chopra, managing director of MaritimESG Middle East Projects Management LLC, suggested the current period will be remembered like the 2008 financial crisis. “Ten years, 20 years from today, we are going to look back and say perhaps this was the period with the maximum amount of change in supply chain,” he said.

The panelists reached a consensus on human capital as the critical competitive advantage, describing how frontline workers are generating the most innovative solutions to disruption challenges.

Anand shared an example from summer 2025 when his company needed to move bulk cargo from Sohar, Oman, to Jordan in a “crisis” moment. “My team developed an overland solution and my drivers said, this can be done,” he recalled. “As a leader you say, gosh, this is a completely out of the box idea. I wasn’t sure if it was operationally possible. And they did it.”

Nijhof echoed this approach. “We can no longer rely on just people with decades of experience,” he said. “You need people who are very open to change, who are creative, who are flexible. Human capital is the only capital that can appreciate over time.”

The panel addressed AI’s role in navigating disruption. Chopra, who teaches supply chain at the University of Houston, characterized AI as a double-edged tool. While useful for inventory management and routine tasks, algorithms trained on historical patterns struggle with unprecedented geopolitical shifts, he argued. “If what reality is changing has not been incorporated in that algorithm, then it’s not going to work.”

Fahl noted automated terminals show dramatically lower claim frequency than facilities requiring human-machine interaction. “The automated is almost always risk free,” he said. “But whenever there is a human interaction between a human and the machine, problems and claims tend to come up.”

Anand highlighted the need for organizational culture change, acknowledging his company had been “grudgingly a bit slow” to embrace bottom-up innovation, but now prioritizing frontline input. Meanwhile, Chopra emphasized continuous learning: “You don’t know which skill is going to come in handy tomorrow because of the uncertainty in the landscape.”

For an industry built on predictable routes and schedules, the message was clear: agility, human capital and willingness to abandon yesterday’s plans are now the price of staying in business.

Top photo (L-R): Akshay Anand, Harald Nijhof, Denis Bandura, Anuj Chopra, Abdul Fahl, Robin Mills. Credit: Ulysses&Crew

Second: Abdul Fahl and Robin Mills. Credit: Ulysses&Crew