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APM Terminals is facing the prospect of losing control of the Omani deepsea transhipment hub of Salalah.
Salalah Port Service Company announced it had “received formal notification from the Ministry of Transport, Communications and Information Technology, confirming that the existing concession agreements will not be extended beyond their contractual expiry date of 1 November 2028,” it said in a filing to the Muscat Stock Exchange.
It added: “The notification further states that the decision not to extend the concession agreement is final and unconditional. The board of directors will consider the notification and assess its potential impact on the company.
“The company will also engage with the relevant stakeholders as appropriate and will keep the market updated on any material developments.”
According to local reports, the ministry separately confirmed the decision, and added that the existing operator was expected to maintain operations at the port until the concession ends.
The port is managed by Maersk’s port operating subsidiary, APM Terminals, which holds a 30% stake in Salalah Port Service Co and signed a 30-year operating concession in 1996 on a build-operate-transfer basis.
Oman’s state-owned shipping and logistics firm, Asyad, holds a 20% stake, and the government’s Social Cohesion Fund holds 10%. The remaining 40% ownership is split between local and institutional investors, on a free float basis. According to the CapitalIQ platform, the largest institutional investor is the Soros fund management LLP, which has just under 20%.
The half-year financial results recorded revenues growing around 20%, to hit OR50.7m ($132m) with container traffic for the six months up 15%, due to a higher number of vessel calls, prompted by the outbreak of the US/Israel-Iran conflict and subsequent closure of the Hormuz straits.
However, profitability declined dramatically, due to the one-off cost of repairing a crane hit by an Iranian drone attack, as well as a 72% increase in fuel costs over the first half of 2025, and a requirement to increase terminal staff to handle the higher number of vessel calls, said CFO Farooq Zuberi.
He added that volumes for July and August were also “very strong”. This followed a 31% increase in throughput last year, when Salalah was established as one of the key hubs for the new Gemini network.
Container throughput reached 4.3m teu in 2025, up from 3.3m teu the previous year, aided by an expansion project which took annual handling capacity up to 6m teu.
Meanwhile, Salalah has become a key regional node for Maersk and Gemini partner Hapag-Lloyd, which have continually stressed the importance of “controlling” the main transhipment hubs in their joint network, and yesterday The Loadstar reported the port had won new calls on one of Gemini’s Asia-Mediterranean services that recently resumed Suez transits.
According to Xeneta’s eeSea liner database, Salalah hosts 18 container liner services, with only two – feeder services to the Horn of Africa operated separately by MSC and Greta Shipping – not featuring the involvement of Maersk or Hapag-Lloyd. The two carriers together represent the vast majority of the port’s container cargo.
This week’s decision gives them a two-year window to structure their network accordingly.
The Omani government has yet to announce whether it will hold a formal tender process to decide on a new concessionaire for the facility after November 2028.