When a supplier says ‘force majeure’: how (and how not) to respond in the first 48 hours

If a supplier has sent you a force majeure notice over the Strait of Hormuz disruption, or any related sanctions and shipping fallout, do not reply immediately, and do not stay silent either. Check three things within the first 48 hours:

• whether the notice actually satisfies your own contract’s requirements for a valid claim;
• what you inadvertently concede by accepting it in writing; and
• whether your own contracts with your customers need a matching notice sent within the same window.

Get these right and you keep your options open. Get them wrong, particularly by accepting facts you haven’t verified, and you can waive rights before you know you had them. A short checklist for the first 48 hours is included at the end of this piece; if you’re holding an actual notice right now, we’re glad to look at the specific wording with you.

Why this is landing on desks now

We covered the underlying situation in our previous briefing, Iran, the US and the Strait of Hormuz: A Legal Briefing for Malaysian Manufacturers. In short: the ceasefire between the US and Iran broke down in early July, the Strait has been effectively closed to normal commercial shipping since, and both sides have walked away from an agreed truce more than once. Suppliers across the region, and their insurers, are invoking force majeure and hardship clauses more readily than they were eighteen months ago. Some of these notices will be entirely legitimate. Not all of them will be, and the two look identical on first read.

A force majeure notice is not automatically valid, and neither side should treat it as one

A notice is a claim, not a fact. Under Malaysian law, force majeure is a creature of contract, there’s no free-standing doctrine that steps in regardless of what your clause says, so the notice has to satisfy your specific wording: a genuine causal link between the Hormuz disruption and that supplier’s actual, specific performance, not the general geopolitical situation, proper notice within any time limit your contract sets, and evidence, not assertion. A notice that gestures vaguely at “the situation in the Middle East” without connecting it to the specific shipment in front of you hasn’t met that bar yet.

Here’s the point rarely stated clearly in general commentary: the more often this cycle repeats, ceasefire, collapse, ceasefire, collapse, the harder it becomes for anyone signing a new contract today to claim renewed disruption was unforeseeable. That cuts against force majeure and frustration arguments for fresh contracts, not for the ones your business already had in place before this pattern became public knowledge. Know which bucket your contract falls into before you accept or reject anything.

What your reply should never do

The instinct to reply warmly and keep the relationship smooth is understandable, and it is exactly how businesses end up conceding rights they didn’t need to concede. Specifically, don’t accept the underlying facts as stated. Acknowledging “force majeure due to the Hormuz closure” in writing, even in a friendly email, can be used against you later, including by your own downstream customers if you’re caught in the middle.

Don’t go silent either: silence is sometimes read as acceptance, and it burns whatever window your own contract gives you to object or to issue your own notice further down the chain. And don’t offer commercial flexibility, extended deadlines, waived penalties, before checking what you owe your own customers on the other side of this contract. Generosity you can’t extend downstream is how the loss ends up sitting with you instead of moving through the chain the way it should.

What a careful reply looks like instead

Acknowledge receipt of the notice, not the facts in it. A short, factual acknowledgment (“we acknowledge receipt of your notice dated [x] and are reviewing it”) commits you to nothing. Ask for the specific evidence connecting the disruption to your specific consignment, not a general account of the regional situation. Reserve your rights expressly, one sentence, and it costs nothing while preserving everything. And check your own downstream contracts the same day: if you owe a matching notice to your own customers, that clock is very likely already running, whether or not you’ve noticed yet.

What to do in the first 48 hours of receiving a force majeure notice

• Pull the actual force majeure clause from the contract in front of you. Not the version you remember, the version that’s signed.
• Send a short holding acknowledgment that reserves your rights and requests evidence. Don’t concede causation.
• Check whether your own sales or supply contracts require a mirrored notice, and if so, send it within your own deadline, not theirs.
• Start a written record of the actual, specific impact on your shipment. This is your evidence if a dispute follows, and it’s much harder to reconstruct later than to note down now.
• If you’re unsure about the notice wording or your own exposure, get it checked before anything goes out in writing, not after. If you’re holding a notice right now, we can review the specific clause and your proposed reply with you, often the most valuable hour of legal advice here is spent before you hit send, not after.

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Prof. Dr. Harald Sippel, MBA is an Austrian-qualified attorney (Rechtsanwalt) and Senior Foreign Advisor at Aqran Vijandran in Kuala Lumpur, supporting foreign companies, with particular depth in Europe and Korean client work, on Malaysian matters across all practice areas. He is the first editor of the book Force Majeure and Hardship in the APAC-Region and regularly advises on force majeure, hardship and supply-continuity risk arising from geopolitical disruption to shipping routes.

Raja Nadhil Aqran is the Managing Partner of Aqran Vijandran in Kuala Lumpur, advising clients on commercial litigation, corporate advisory, ESG and compliance matters across Malaysia and the wider region. He regularly advises clients on the contractual and dispute-risk consequences of invoking, or receiving, force majeure notices in cross-border supply and offtake agreements.

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