All three alliances return to Suez, freeing ships before 2027 talks

The container industry's return to the Suez Canal is now alliance-wide. Evergreen will join its Ocean Alliance partners in sending Asia-Europe services through Suez this week, and Premier Alliance will restart Suez transits on its Asia-Mediterranean MD1 service next month¹.

Linerlytica, the container shipping analyst, said all three main alliances and MSC are set to be fully back through Suez by the first quarter of 2027. That would leave Zim as the only major carrier still routing Asia-Europe cargo round the Cape of Good Hope¹.

The sailings that lock the switch in

Evergreen will send the 16,556 teu Ever Eon and the Ever Edit eastbound through Suez on the Ocean Alliance's NEU7/CES service on 7 and 11 November. The 20,124 teu Ever Gifted follows on the alliance's MD2 service on 16 November¹.

On Premier Alliance, the first listed sailing is Yang Ming's 11,714 teu YM Trust from Ningbo on 13 November, with Suez transits beginning next month¹. The revised MD1 rotation adds a call at Sokhna for Asia-Red Sea cargo and turns in 84 days. It will use 12 ships of 11,700 to 14,000 teu from Yang Ming, against 16 ships on the Cape route¹.

HMM said the decision was taken with its alliance partners after a safety review. "This matter was decided and agreed upon from a Premier Alliance perspective, following a comprehensive review of market conditions and safety aspects," an HMM spokesperson told The Loadstar¹.

Evergreen will also relaunch its China-Red Sea OGRD service on 12 November, calling at Jeddah, Sokhna and Aqaba, among other ports¹.

Transit times: what comes back

For buyers, the gain is measured in days. One Indian exporter quotes 23 to 24 days from Chennai to Rotterdam, against 34 to 36 days via the Cape of Good Hope².

Drewry puts the gain on a full round voyage at 27 days. A Suez round voyage covers about 21,878 nautical miles and takes 97 days, against 29,711 nautical miles and 124 days via the Cape, a saving of 7,833 nautical miles².

Those are round-voyage figures, not door-to-door promises. Gemini's Maersk and Hapag-Lloyd have not disclosed revised round-trip durations for their own Suez service, and shorter sea legs can be offset by missed connections at hubs such as Salalah and Tangier³. Container News illustrated the arithmetic: a weekly service with a 70-day round trip needs about ten ships, and a 63-day trip could in theory need nine³.

A capacity release into a soft market

Shorter voyages free ships. Alphaliner found 24 of 46 direct Far East-Europe services were transiting the Red Sea in a survey published on 21 October, carrying 63% of deployed capacity. That share was 70% on Far East-Mediterranean routes and 58% on Far East-North Europe⁴.

The extra capacity is arriving in a market where carriers are already struggling to hold prices. Linerlytica said the 1 November Asia-Europe increases failed to gain traction and expects further declines in the coming weeks¹.

The weekly indexes tell a mixed story. Drewry's World Container Index fell 3% to $4,429 per 40-foot container, while Shanghai to Rotterdam rose 1% to $3,686 and Shanghai to Genoa was unchanged at $4,151. The Freightos Baltic Index slipped 1% to $3,513, but the NYSHEX Freight Index for Asia-North Europe rose 5.4% to $3,203.78⁵.

Xeneta's 23 October assessment put Far East to North Europe at $3,698 per FEU, up 6.8% on the week, and Far East to Mediterranean at $4,442, up 5.8%. Both were still down 33.2% and 36.7% from 1 July⁶. In the same week, Freightos had Asia-North Europe at $3,551 per FEU, up 3%, and the Mediterranean at $4,252, up 8%⁷.

Demand has been the counterweight. Volumes from the Far East to Europe rose 12.2% in the first seven months of the year, Xeneta said. Its chief analyst Peter Sand argued that demand was strong enough to stop rates collapsing even as Red Sea capacity returned⁶.

The cost gap explains why carriers want the shorter route. Drewry estimates Suez saves about $1 million per round voyage for a 24,000 teu ship, or roughly $43 per slot, before war-risk insurance².

The switchover bill: bunching, queues and reversal risk

Routing changes are rarely clean. North Europe hubs expect ships on Suez services to overlap with ships still coming round the Cape, creating a bunching effect at berths⁸.

Elsewhere, bottlenecks are already visible. MSC extended its Shikra service to Khor Fakkan and Sohar, where vessels face waits of more than two weeks to berth¹. Saudi Red Sea ports are at capacity, with ships waiting days or sometimes weeks off Jeddah. There, the value of imports nearly doubled year on year in August to SAR33.5 billion ($8.9 billion)⁹.

Security remains the swing factor. The Houthis said on 27 October they had hit Saudi Arabia's Ras Tanura refinery and repelled an advance near Bab el-Mandeb, and the fighting has shattered a 2022 UN-brokered truce¹⁰. The Houthis declared Bab el-Mandeb closed to Israel-linked vessels as recently as August⁷.

Carriers have built in an exit. Maersk and Hapag-Lloyd said further routing changes depend on conditions, and Container News noted that a fresh diversion would force them to absorb longer voyages, adjust schedules or add capacity³.

Zim is the outlier. Linerlytica said the Israeli carrier is the only major line still on the Cape, possibly because of its nationality¹. Freightos, however, reported that Zim had resumed Red Sea transits for its joint Asia-US East Coast service with MSC, a reminder that routing choices differ by trade⁷.

What to watch

Two measures matter for 2027 contracts. The first is Suez transit counts: 55 containerships passed through the canal in the week to 18 October, and there have now been three weeks with more than 50 transits¹¹. Clarksons put weekly container capacity through Suez at 753,000 teu in the first two weeks of October, against 1.457 million teu in the same period of 2023².

The second is whether the next round of carrier increases sticks. If it does not, buyers will carry more negotiating power into 2027 talks than the 1 November filings suggested¹.