Tuesday, October 20, 2026
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Ocean Oct 12, 2026 · 8 min read

Carriers head back to Suez as Red Sea risk and surcharges stay

Suez is back on Asia–Europe schedules, but one insurance bill wipes out the saving. Asia–Europe carriers keep shifting services back through Suez, even after CU Lines’ 2,400 teu CUL Klang was reported under small-arms fire in the southern Red Sea last week (The Loadstar). We think this return is thin and reversible. Drewry puts the Suez saving at about $1m per round voyage, or $43 per slot. A 0.3% war-risk premium on a $225m ship cancels it. MSC still charges $91/teu in piracy and Suez surcharges through October. Forwarders should quote transit times and cargo cover per service. Our call: those surcharges are still on invoices in November.

The Suez return is on, but it is one insurance quote away from reversing
Asia–Europe container lines are steadily moving services back through the Red Sea and the Suez Canal. They are doing it while the region gets more dangerous, not less. Last week CU Lines’ 2,400 teu CUL Klang was reported to have come under small-arms fire in the southern Red Sea. According to The Loadstar on 12 October, that attack “was not enough to deter other carriers.”
Our view is simple. The return is real, and it is already pushing rates down. But the economics behind it are so thin that a single bad week could send ships back round the Cape of Good Hope. Forwarders should sell Suez routings as a bonus, not a promise. They should also expect shippers to keep paying Red Sea surcharges for a while yet.

How far the return has gone

The shift has built up over two months.
On 14 September, Maersk and Hapag-Lloyd, the two lines in the Gemini Cooperation, said four more services (AE5, AE11, AE12 and ME2) would go back to the Suez route, Seatrade Maritime reported. AE15 and AE19 were already using it. Maersk said the move meant “we will offer more efficient transit times for customers.”
Two days later, the 24,188 teu OOCL Portugal transited the canal. The Suez Canal Authority (SCA) called it COSCO Shipping Lines’ first southbound passage since the Red Sea crisis began, gCaptain reported on 16 September. The SCA said container ship net tonnage through the canal reached 72.1 million tons in the first eight months of 2026. That was up 54.2% from 46.7 million tons a year earlier.
AE12, Gemini’s Asia–Mediterranean loop, now has a date. Its first Suez sailing leaves Tanjung Pelepas on 27 October and leaves Algeciras on 5 December, Ahram Online reported on 29 September.
The last big group has now joined. On 6 October, Freightos reported that the Premier Alliance, “the last holdout among the three alliances and MSC”, will bring some services back to the Red Sea this month. Its head of research, Judah Levine, wrote in that update: “Even with elevated tension in the region container carriers continue to gradually increase Red Sea traffic”.
Even Drewry has been caught out. Simon Heaney, its head of container research, told The Loadstar: “we cannot deny the evidence that lines are returning to Suez ahead of our projected timeline”. Drewry now expects transits to reach “80% of pre-diversion level by February 2027”.

The saving is smaller than it looks

This is the core of our view. The money case for Suez is real but small.
Drewry calculates that, for 24,000 teu ships, Suez saves “approximately $1m per round-voyage, or $43 per slot” against the Cape. That is before two things: canal toll discounts, which help, and war-risk insurance, which hurts. War-risk insurance is extra cover that ship owners buy to sail through a conflict zone. It is priced as a percentage of the ship’s value.
The Loadstar sets out the maths. A war-risk premium of 0.3% of hull value, on a newbuild worth $225m, adds about $1.35m in premiums per round trip. (Our arithmetic: 0.3% of $225m is $675,000 per transit, and a round trip means two transits.) Heaney said: “That on its own would tip the economic advantage over to the Cape routing, just.”
There are offsets. Heaney noted that insurers often offer rebates of around 50% for voyages completed with no incident. And he warned that “war-risk insurance is often negotiated voyage by voyage, while any canal discounts are discretionary”.
That is the problem. A saving of $43 a slot can vanish with one underwriter’s phone call. When the margin is that small, routing becomes a weekly decision, not a network plan.

Shippers are paying both ways

For now, shippers get the shorter route and still pay the risk premium. MSC has extended its Piracy Risk and Suez Canal surcharges through October, at a combined $91/teu: $55 for piracy and $36 for Suez, The Loadstar reported.
Cargo owners also carry insurance risk themselves. Antonis Rigalos of ShiftX, a shipper group, told The Loadstar that some insurers do not offer Suez cover. When a carrier switches routing at short notice, the shipper may have to find cover fast. “A couple of these carriers are doing ad hoc routings via Suez, and that creates a little bit of stress for shippers,” he said. His ask was plain: “It needs to be plannable; it needs to be safe and consistent.”
Some lines are making routing a selling point. CMA CGM’s Japan–North Europe OCR string is “clearly advertised” as a trans-Suez service. The Loadstar said it offers a 30-day transit that shippers can choose.
Rigalos also said that, so far, his members found the extra insurance cost on trans-Suez cargo had not been too heavy. That is the good news. The rest of this story is about whether it stays that way.

The risk is moving the wrong way

The security picture has worsened on two fronts.
In Yemen, the Houthis reported airstrikes on the Hamdan and Thourah districts of Sanaa around midnight going into Monday 12 October. They blamed Saudi Arabia, and Saudi Arabia did not immediately comment, AP reported via The Federal. The Houthis are still firing missiles and drones towards Saudi airports. In September, gCaptain reported that Houthi forces had captured Mocha and moved onto islands around the Bab el-Mandeb, the narrow strait at the southern end of the Red Sea. The group has limited its declared naval blockade to Saudi ships.
Near Hormuz, the same AP report said a drone hit the tanker MT Petro Dolphin on Sunday, and two Indian seafarers are missing. India’s foreign ministry said repeated strikes on shipping were “deeply concerning and risk further aggravating an already volatile situation.”
Carriers have hedged their bets. Maersk and Hapag-Lloyd said future routing depends on stability in the Red Sea and on no further escalation, gCaptain reported. Maersk has said: “The safety of the crew, the vessels, and customers’ cargo remains the highest priority.”

What happened last time

This has happened before, and it reversed fast.
In December 2023, Maersk first suspended Red Sea transits on 15 December, a day after a near-miss missile attack on the Maersk Gibraltar, gCaptain reported. After the US-led naval coalition, Operation Prosperity Guardian, was set up, Maersk decided to resume. Then, on the night of Saturday 30 December, the Maersk Hangzhou was hit by a missile and swarmed by four small boats while passing through the Bab el-Mandeb. A US Navy helicopter took out three of them.
By Tuesday 2 January 2024, Maersk had reversed course. “We have made the decision to pause all transits through the Red Sea / Gulf of Aden until further notice,” it said in a customer update quoted by CNBC. Its ships went back round the Cape.
The lesson for today: one serious attack on a big-name ship can undo a return within days. The CUL Klang incident did not. A strike on a Gemini or Ocean Alliance ship would be a different matter.

What forwarders should do now

Here is what we think this means on the ground.
Rates keep sliding. Suez cuts days off each voyage, so the same ships can do more trips. That works like adding capacity. Freightos said that effect is “likely one contributor” to Asia–Europe rates sliding since mid-July. On 6 October it put Asia–North Europe at $3,260/FEU (per forty-foot container) and Asia–Mediterranean at $3,555/FEU, both down 2–3% on the week. Shippers will push for lower rates on Q4 and early 2027 contracts.
Surcharges become the argument. Customers will ask why they pay $91/teu in Red Sea surcharges when their box is no longer going round Africa. Forwarders need a clear answer. Carriers are still paying war-risk premiums priced voyage by voyage. Those costs do not disappear just because the route got shorter.
Quote per service, not per lane. Transit times now differ by carrier and string. Confirm the routing before promising a delivery date.
Check cargo insurance on every booking. If a policy excludes Suez, an ad hoc reroute can leave cargo uncovered. Flag this to shippers before they book, not after the ship has turned north at Bab el-Mandeb.
Keep a Cape fallback in every plan. Build buffer into delivery promises for anything time-critical, especially stock for Lunar New Year.

Our call

We expect two things.
First, MSC’s $91/teu Piracy Risk and Suez Canal surcharges will be rolled into November, not dropped. Carriers have no reason to give up a surcharge while war-risk premiums are set voyage by voyage.
Second, Asia–North Europe spot rates on the Freightos index will keep falling and finish Q4 below $3,000/FEU, as more Premier Alliance and Gemini tonnage runs the shorter route. That holds unless a major carrier’s ship is hit in the Red Sea. If that happens, we expect at least one alliance to pause Suez sailings within a week, as Maersk did in January 2024.

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