Star Feeders is a specialist short-sea common carrier container feeder service.

Since its inception in 1991, Star Feeders has embodied the ‘Hub and Spoke’ principle of modern containerized shipping in the United Arab Emirates.

Each of the seven Emirates which together form the United Arab Emirates has its own trade.

Many have free zones to encourage foreign direct investment, to create scale to grow their businesses, and to improve their competitiveness. All Emirates have port facilities, but often volume dictates that the major regional ports act as transshipment hubs, and that smaller feeder vessels are used to perform either the last leg (for imports) or the first leg (for exports).

It becomes therefore of the utmost importance that the smaller ‘spoke’ ports are linked with the ‘hub’ ports on a very frequent basis.

Star Feeders, with its fleet of four compact, cellular container vessels, is able to fulfill this role perfectly.

Ajman imports are loaded on each of five vessel calls a week, whilst Sharjah is called 6 times a week.

By carrying Ras Al Khaimah exports to Jebel Ali five times weekly, transit time from Ras Al Khaimah to worldwide destinations is usually only one day longer than from Jebel Ali itself.

Ports with currently smaller volumes are served with a slightly lower frequency for now, but will be served more frequently as volumes grow.

A fifth and subsequent vessels will be added as volume dictates.