The office
Where the Dubai desk sits
Our head office address is Deira, Port Saeed, Al Makateb Building, Office No 611, Dubai - United Arab Emirates. Deira is the older commercial district on the northern side of Dubai Creek, and Port Saeed sits between the Creek and Dubai International Airport, which is where the trading houses and the freight desks that serve them have long been.
Midtrans Shipping And Services is a freight forwarder, a customs broker and a warehouse operator. We are headquartered in Dubai, with offices in Jebel Ali, Damascus, Tartous and Latakia and a partner office in Guangzhou and Hong Kong, and our commercial strength is in Syria, the UAE and Egypt. The Dubai office handles the bookings, the documentation and the clearance; the operational work happens at Jebel Ali, at the airport and on the road.
- Deira, Port Saeed, Al Makateb Building, Office No 611
- Dubai - United Arab Emirates
- Freight forwarding, customs brokerage and warehousing
- Established in Damascus, Syria, in 1998
Sea
Sea freight out of Jebel Ali
Jebel Ali is the port we book against, and it is the reason a Dubai desk is worth having. It is one of the region's major container ports and it is served by direct sailings to the eastern Mediterranean, the Red Sea, the Indian subcontinent and the Far East, which means most destinations we serve are reachable without a transhipment that adds a week and a risk.
We book full container load and less than container load cargo, and the choice between them follows the volume rather than the preference. Below the point at which a container fills economically, groupage is cheaper; above it, a dedicated box is cheaper and safer because the cargo is not opened between origin and destination. Where a buyer has several suppliers and none of them fills a container alone, we group them ourselves at our warehouse and ship one box.
Air
Air freight from Dubai
Air freight from Dubai is what we use when the cargo is time-critical, high-value or small enough that the freight cost is a minor part of the landed cost. Dubai International Airport and Al Maktoum International at Dubai World Central both carry cargo, and the network out of them reaches the destinations we serve on direct services.
We book air cargo for commercial and industrial consignments: spare parts holding up a production line, instruments and components, samples and pre-production runs, and urgent replacements for goods damaged in transit. We do not handle courier traffic, small parcels or personal shipments, which belong to a different kind of operator entirely.
- Air freight bookings
- Dubai International and Al Maktoum International
- Spare parts, instruments and components
- Airport-to-airport and door delivery scope
Land
Road freight across the Gulf and beyond
Road is the mode that does the work the sea cannot inside the Gulf. From Dubai we move full and part loads across the Gulf Cooperation Council states, and we run the overland leg for Syria-bound cargo where the routing calls for it. Land freight also covers the short movements that make everything else possible: port to warehouse, warehouse to airport, zone to zone.
Cross-border road movement runs on the transit documentation rather than on goodwill, and the discipline is in the manifest, the seals and the driver knowing which crossing point the declaration names. We control the trucker directly on our own movements so that the exit is confirmed by us rather than reported to us.
Corridors
The routes we run from the UAE
Three corridors carry most of what leaves this office. The Syrian corridor runs by sea to Latakia and Tartous and overland through the Gulf and Jordan, and it is a core lane for the team because the company was established in Damascus and keeps an office there. The Egyptian corridor runs by sea to Alexandria, Damietta, Port Said and Ain Sokhna, and its difficulty is the advance-registration file rather than the sailing. The Gulf corridor is road, and it is measured in days rather than weeks.
Each corridor has its own page: the UAE to Syria route, the UAE to Egypt route, and the lane detail under our trade lane directory. Clearance at both ends is set out under UAE clearance, Egyptian clearance and Syrian clearance.
Working with us
What to send when you contact the Dubai office
A useful first message contains the commodity, the origin and destination addresses, the gross weight and cubic volume or the package dimensions, the ready date, and the delivery terms if they are already agreed. With those we can price the movement and tell you which mode and which declaration type fits.
If the cargo is coming from several suppliers, send the supplier list and the ready date for each one, because that is what decides whether the shipment consolidates into one container or moves in two. If the cargo is already at sea, send the bill of lading and the invoice and we will pick up the clearance from there.
- Commodity and intended use
- Origin and destination addresses
- Gross weight, cubic volume or package dimensions
- Ready date and required arrival date
- Delivery terms if agreed
- Send it through the quote form
