Suez Canal container traffic passes half its 2023 level

Container ships are using the Suez Canal again. In the first two weeks of October, an average of 753,000 TEU of container capacity went through the canal each week, according to BIMCO's analysis of Clarksons Research data. The same weeks of 2023 saw about 1.46 million. This is the first time since the Houthi attacks began in late 2023 that transits have passed half the pre-crisis level.

In the same week, shippers told The Loadstar that the return is causing them stress. Antonis Rigalos of ShiftX, a shipper network, said some cargo insurers do not cover Suez. When a carrier switches a sailing, the shipper has to find cover at short notice.

Both things are true because the count holds two kinds of sailing. Some ships run on rewritten rotations with a published schedule, and BIMCO counts routing changes on 16 services since early July. The rest are single voyages, and a carrier can send the next one back round Africa.

Carriers keep that option open because the canal saves about as much as it costs to insure. Drewry compared two 24,000 TEU Asia-North Europe services and found that going through Suez saves about $1 million per round voyage. A war-risk premium of 0.3% of a $225 million hull, paid on the passage out and again on the way back, comes to about $1.35 million. Insurers often rebate about half after a voyage with no incident. The premium is quoted per voyage and moves with every incident, so carriers decide the route one sailing at a time.

A rewritten rotation is much harder to reverse. The Premier Alliance of ONE, HMM and Yang Ming is cutting the round trip on its FE1 Asia-North Europe loop from 13 weeks to 11. On a weekly loop that frees two ships. Those ships go to other trades, so sending FE1 back round the Cape would mean finding two ships again. A single voyage through the canal commits nothing, because the Cape pro forma keeps its ships.

For the shipper, the difference is a fortnight. Xeneta put the average Cape sailing from Yantian in China to Rotterdam at 41 days. One ship that went via Suez made it in 27. On a rewritten rotation that fortnight is in the schedule, so stock, cargo cover and onward trucking can be planned around it. On a single voyage the saving only shows up as an ETA change after the booking is made.

Schedule data splits the same way. A feed that records routing per service is right for the rewritten rotations and wrong for every single voyage. Any planning tool that uses the feed inherits the same error.

So the weekly count will keep running ahead of the cargo a shipper can plan on. The date to check is 9 November, when FE1 makes its first westbound transit on the shortened round trip.