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Average monthly capacity scheduled to pass through the Suez is up 60 % from H1. Xinhua News Agency / Contributor / Getty Images

Suez capacity sees rapid growth as ocean carriers hurry back to route

By Greg Knowler

Ocean carriers are driving more tonnage through the Red Sea and Suez Canal, and the scheduled capacity due to transit the waterway is rising fast, although still a long way off the levels seen in late 2023 before Houthi militants began their attacks on commercial shipping.

While carriers are aiming for a gradual return to the shorter route to avoid overloading marine terminals in Europe, the amount of reactivated proforma capacity— i. e., tonnage scheduled via existing and planned services— has risen sharply.

Data from rate benchmarking platform Xeneta shows average monthly capacity scheduled to pass through the Suez from July through October will be 1.3 million TEUs, up 60 % compared with the monthly average in the first half of the year but still just a fifth of what it was three years ago before the Houthi attacks began.

Despite the Aug. 11 missile attack by Houthis that killed six on a Tanzanian freighter in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, carriers including Maersk, Hapag-Lloyd, CMA CGM, Cosco Shipping and Mediterranean Shipping Co. are increasingly rerouting of their services from the longer transits around the Cape of Good Hope in southern Africa to the shorter Suez route thanks to a perceived

improvement in security as well as high bunker fuel prices and a competitive edge provided by the faster transits. Seven MSC ships crossed the Bab el-Mandeb by mid-August, and Cosco reopened and resumed bookings for selected Red Sea and Asia-Red Sea services passing through the strait. Maersk already has more than 30 % of its around-Africa volume back on the trans-Suez route. Maersk and Hapag-Lloyd are also poised to send their Gemini Cooperation India-Europe services through the Red Sea and Suez for the first time.

Cautious, but confident

The Suez moves come as Maersk CEO Vincent Clerc told analysts on a second-quarter earnings call in August that he believed security conditions had been met to safely resume transits, despite the attack by Houthi militants days earlier off the coast of Yemen.

“ It’ s been a long time since there was an incident with a container vessel.”

Hapag-Lloyd CEO Rolf Habben Jansen was also confident that safety conditions in the Red Sea warranted an increase in Suez services, albeit a gradual one.

“ It’ s been a long time since there was an incident with a container vessel, and that’ s why we are gradually but steadily looking at increasing the number of services that we take through,” he told reporters.

30 Journal of Commerce | September 7, 2026 www. joc. com