Australia and New Zealand are two of the world's most significant red meat exporters and the Middle East is a market both countries have long supplied at scale. Australia recently recorded a historical high of 2.24 million tonnes in total red meat exports, with beef alone hitting 1.34 million tonnes. The Middle East accounts for roughly 10% of Australian sheepmeat exports and 3–4% of beef exports - with frozen products making up around a quarter of that beef volume, predominantly serving the region's foodservice and fast-food sectors. New Zealand, meanwhile, supplies thousands of tonnes of frozen and chilled meat annually to Gulf Cooperation Council countries, with frozen bovine meat and sheepmeat accounting for roughly 11% of its total export profile.
That trade has not stopped. But some of the routes it travels have changed dramatically since the start of the US-Iran conflict.
US-Iran tensions and the associated risks in the Strait of Hormuz have forced a fundamental rethink of how containerised meat reaches the Gulf. Daniel Morrison (pictured), NTI's head of marine insurance in Australia, has watched the shift closely.
"Previously, a containerised vessel would go through the Strait of Hormuz and dock at Jebel Ali in Dubai," he said. "Now, due to the risk to people on board and the vessel itself, shipping lines are instead going into Fujairah or Oman - ports on the Arabian Sea side - and trucking goods across, or going around to Jeddah and driving containers by truck across to Abu Dhabi."
That rerouting may sound like a logistics footnote, but it carries significant implications for perishable cargo. The new land legs expose refrigerated containers to extreme summer heat across some of the most inhospitable terrain on earth - conditions that can push internal temperatures to dangerous levels even before any equipment failure occurs.
Morrison has a vivid illustration of what heat alone can do to cargo. "Years ago I had a container of shoes where the glue melted because it was just a tin box at 50 degrees in direct sun," he said. If that is what happens to footwear, the stakes for frozen lamb or chilled beef - travelling overland through the Arabian summer in containers that may not be designed for the task - are considerably higher.
Morrison noted that "the logistics challenges can cause increased frequency of loss - particularly with perishable goods in a Middle Eastern summer" when ports and handling infrastructure are suddenly absorbing container volumes they were never built to handle.
For insurance brokers with clients in the red meat export space, Morrison said the change of route is a change of risk, and policies need to reflect that.
The most immediate issue is policy geography. "Many policies specify 'Middle East' rather than individual countries - you don't want to find yourself with a claim in Saudi Arabia or Oman that's disputed because it wasn't specifically noted," Morrison warned. With goods now transiting Saudi Arabia and Oman as standard rather than exceptional routing, that wording gap is no longer theoretical.
On the question of refrigeration failure, the good news is that the right cover exists - if it has been correctly applied. There is, Morrison explained, "a specialised clause for frozen and chilled foodstuffs and frozen and chilled meat that covers refrigerating machinery breakdown." Standard dry-goods clauses offer no such protection. Brokers should verify these clauses are explicitly in place, particularly for clients who may have set up their policies before the routing changes took effect.
Currency is another practical consideration: meat export contracts are typically priced in US dollars, so brokers should review whether policy limits remain adequate given exchange rate movements. And for the full journey - from cold store to final delivery, including any change of ownership mid-transit - Morrison's strong preference is end-to-end cover. Partial cover creates gaps that can be difficult to resolve when a claim arrives.
His overarching advice: pick up the phone. "The cargo underwriter will help get the right clauses in place" - and in a market that is moving faster than policy wordings, that conversation is worth having now rather than at renewal.
