Some 63% of the ocean capacity deployed between the Far East and Europe has returned to the Red Sea, following three years of detours, but some operators are hedging against renewed disruption by maintaining several Cape of Good Hope routes.
Having surveyed the 10 largest carrier networks over the past month, Alphaliner found vessels on 24 of the 46 direct Far East–Europe services were transiting the Red Sea, accounting for 70% of deployed capacity on Far East-Mediterranean routes.
On the Far East-North Europe trades, the number was a little lower, 58%, with containers moving between the Far East and Europe via Suez now topping 5.5m teu, of the possible 8.7m teu available to the trades – CMA CGM alone accounting for 1.3m of this.
However, the Suez return remains something of a mixed bag, with multiple services opting to transit the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait on outbound routes to Europe, but electing to sail around the Cape on return journeys.
Of the 10 carriers surveyed, five confirmed they had resumed Red Sea transits over the past month, that number set to climb to eight after Premier Alliance partners HMM, ONE, and Yang Ming all announced a return to the waterway.
Should they carry through on that, it would leave Evergreen and Zim as the only top-ten carriers not to resume Suez transits – although Zim was always likely to be the last, given that the Houthis have explicitly identified the Israeli shipping line as a target.
While CMA CGM has essentially retained some sort of Suez footprint through the crisis, others have embraced a more tentative return, MSC only resuming transits in August, albeit it now sends 2.2m teu over 11 loops through the waterway.
Gemini partners Hapag-Lloyd and Maersk began to bring services back in July and now represent 1.76m teu of deployed capacity, with the Ocean Alliance’s Cosco/OOCL having restored six services, with a combined 1.27m teu.
Although the geopolitical situation has suggested room for this manoeuvre by the carriers, it is also believed to be partly driven by economics, the lines eyeing the benefits of reducing fuel consumption at a time when bunker prices remain elevated.
According to Alphaliner, very-low sulphur fuel oil (VLSFO) has been trading at $881 per tonne on the Singapore spot market, leaving it up 97% year on year in a moment when shippers are aware that they may have the stronger hand to play.