The third cargo · HS 61 / 62 / 64 · UN Comtrade 2023

Garments & footwear

The second-biggest cargo on this system and the first one where the Gulf is the BUYER, not the seller. That inverts who we sell to — and it puts our Indian offices on the loading end of the one lane we own at both ends.

Read the direction before you read the size

The GCC imports — of apparel and footwear a year. Polymer and dates are export studies where the Gulf is the origin; this is the opposite, so the freight is bought at origin, or by the Gulf buyer on FOB terms.

What that means in practice: the account to win is the Dubai or Riyadh buying office, and the cargo is executed by our Kochi and Bangalore offices at the loading end. Win here, deliver there. And do not lead with rate — freight is only 2–4% of a garment's landed cost, so the thing that sells is hitting the season, not shaving the quote.

Source: UN Comtrade 2023, HS 61 + 62 + 64, filtered server-side to clean aggregates.

Who buys it

The six GCC states, apparel vs footwear

Importer	Apparel	Footwear	Total

Where UAE re-export goes

Two-thirds of it never leaves the Gulf

Destination	Value	Leg

Who supplies the Gulf — and whether we have anyone there

Every origin shipping apparel or footwear into the GCC, against our partner count. A red zero is cargo we cannot touch at the loading end.

#	Origin	Region	Into GCC	of which footwear	Our partners	Prospects

The companies

GCC importers hold the FOB decision; origin exporters load the cargo. A blank contact means unproven, not un-chased.

Company	Country	Side	Tier	Qualifying individual	Email	Phone

What this data is, and is not

Both directions live in one table and must never be summed together. Every figure on this page filters on flow first.
The intra-GCC figure is directionally true, not precisely true. The UAE reports $1.93bn of apparel to Saudi Arabia; Saudi reports receiving $85.6m from the UAE. Under the customs union, road cargo is not always re-filed at the destination, and part of the UAE figure is transit. The road freight is real; the exact number is not.
Mirror gaps are intelligence, not errors. The Gulf reports receiving far more from Viet Nam (−77%) and Indonesia (−63%) than those countries report sending — that cargo is consolidated through a third country, and whoever consolidates it is buying freight in volume on someone else's paperwork.
2023 is the latest complete Comtrade year, and trade press puts Saudi apparel imports up 12.5% and the UAE up 14.5% since. Treat these as a floor.
A blank email is deliberate. An address is only stored when its domain matches the company's own verified website, or a defensible initialism of the registered name. Blank beats wrong.