Ocean Oct 20, 2026 · 8 min read

Gemini puts a date on the Suez return

Gemini sets Q1 2027 for its Suez return. Price your 2027 Asia–Europe contracts for it now. Hapag-Lloyd CEO Rolf Habben Jansen expects nearly all Gemini services (the Maersk and Hapag-Lloyd alliance) back through Suez during Q1 2027, The Loadstar reported on 19 October. A new China–west Med loop sails from Shanghai on 22 November. Our view: rates will fall faster than carriers want. Shanghai–Rotterdam already fell about 15% in three weeks to $3,485 per 40ft on 24 September, Drewry data shows. Expect patchy schedules as ships switch routes. Our call: Drewry’s Shanghai–Rotterdam rate goes below $3,000 per 40ft by the end of January 2027.

Gemini puts a date on the Suez return, and Asia–Europe rates have further to fall
The Suez return now has a date. Hapag-Lloyd CEO Rolf Habben Jansen expects nearly all of the Gemini Cooperation’s services to run through the Suez Canal again during the first quarter of 2027, perhaps with one or two exceptions. Gemini is the East–West alliance between Maersk and Hapag-Lloyd. The Loadstar reported his comments on 19 October 2026.
“If there is no change, I would expect that more or less all of our services will be back through Suez,” Habben Jansen said.
At the same time, the two carriers are redesigning their Asia–Mediterranean network from the second half of November. That includes a new loop whose first sailing, the 13,100 teu Maersk Edirne, leaves Shanghai on 22 November. A teu is a twenty-foot equivalent unit, the standard measure of container capacity.

What we think it means

Our view is simple. The Cape of Good Hope detour has been the main thing holding up Asia–Europe rates, and for the biggest Western carriers it is ending within one quarter. Ships the detour tied up are coming back into service. Carriers cannot quietly absorb that much capacity, so prices will keep sliding into the 2027 contract season.
Carriers will say the return is slow and managed. That is true, and it is the right way to do it. But slow is not the same as small. Once Gemini is fully back, the capacity effect is the same, it just arrives over a few months instead of a few weeks.
Shippers and forwarders who sign 2027 annual contracts as if the detour were still running will overpay. That is the main risk for the next three months.

The numbers behind the call

Start with the canal itself. Bimco, the shipowners’ association, said weekly container ship capacity through Suez averaged 753,000 teu in the first two weeks of October, citing Clarksons Research. In the same period of 2023, before the diversions began, it was 1,457,000 teu. Seatrade Maritime News reported the figures on 14 October.
That is roughly half of the pre-crisis flow. For context, Bimco said capacity through the canal averaged just 141,000 teu a week from early February 2024 to mid-2026. That was about 11% of what passed in the same weeks of 2023. The recovery since mid-2026 has been fast.
Bimco also put a number on what the detour did to the market. It estimates that rerouting away from Suez raised global demand for container ships by about 10%. Bimco’s Niels Rasmussen added: “That increase is now reducing quickly.”
Not everyone measures the return the same way. Liner analyst Lars Jensen told The Loadstar: “The latest numbers, at least I have, is we are roughly 30%-35% normalised across the market for the Suez routing.” An earlier Windward analysis, published by Hellenic Shipping News on 2 October, quoted Sea-Intelligence saying “Suez routing for Asia-Europe services has recovered to only about a quarter of pre-crisis levels”. The different figures measure different things: ship capacity through the canal versus services formally rerouted. But they all say the same thing. A large share of the return is still to come.
Windward’s own data shows the pace. “Suez containership transits rose 59% from March to September, from 139 to 221,” it said. Transits by ships of 300 metres and longer, the big Asia–Europe vessels, “rose from 22 to 127 transits a month.”
Rates are already reacting. Drewry’s World Container Index put Shanghai–Rotterdam at $3,485 per 40ft container on 24 September, down 4% in a week. According to the Windward analysis, that lane “fell about 15% between 3 and 24 Sep, from $4,092 to $3,485 per 40ft container”. Shanghai–Genoa fell 5% that week to $3,835. Drewry said it expected rates to keep falling, “as recovering effective capacity outweighs blank sailings”. A blank sailing is a scheduled voyage the carrier cancels to cut capacity. The slide has paused since. On 15 October, Drewry had Shanghai–Rotterdam up 6% at $3,522, the first Asia–Europe rise after 13 weekly falls, as carriers pushed new rate levels.
There is a longer-term problem for carriers too. Alphaliner data quoted in the Windward analysis says carriers “expanded Asia-Europe capacity by approximately 41% between May 2023 and May 2025”. Much of that new capacity was soaked up by the longer route. Without the detour, it has to find cargo.

Gemini’s new network

The redesign shows how Gemini wants to run the lane after the return. It reorganises the regional hub-and-spoke model in Gemini’s Asia–Mediterranean network: a few large services feed cargo into hub ports, and smaller feeder services carry it on to regional ports.
The new loop is called AE18 by Maersk and SE5 by Hapag-Lloyd. It calls only at transhipment hubs, which are ports where cargo is moved from one ship to another. The rotation is Shanghai, Xiamen, Tanjung Pelepas, Algeciras, Tangier, Algeciras again, then back to Xiamen. Maersk said the network “will also enable product enhancements for our customers”.
Other Gemini services are changing too, The Loadstar reported. Asia–North Europe Loop 1 will make Rotterdam, not Tangier, its first European call. Asia–Mediterranean Loop 2 will drop its westbound Tangier call for Port Said and add a call at Salalah before Suez. Loop 4 will add Damietta and swap Shanghai for Nansha.
Maersk is also rebuilding its links from the Strait of Gibraltar to West Africa. From the third week of December 2026, it is changing four services, WAF1, WAF3, WAF5 and WAF6, El Estrecho Digital reported on 20 October. WAF1 becomes a dedicated Algeciras–Tanger Med–Dakar shuttle, so Asian and Middle Eastern cargo can be transhipped at the Strait. WAF5 adds Algeciras and Tanger Med to a rotation that includes Monrovia, Abidjan, Takoradi, San Pedro and Lagos. WAF3 adds Tema, Onne and Pointe-Noire, and WAF6 adds Cotonou. Maersk warned that sailing schedules may change while the changes are rolled out.
Our reading: Algeciras and Tanger Med are becoming Gemini’s main switching yard for Asia, the Mediterranean and West Africa. Forwarders with West African cargo should expect more of it to move through Gibraltar hubs, not direct calls.

Who else is coming back

Gemini is not alone. Linerlytica, the analyst firm, said it expects “a full-scale return to the Suez route expected by the first quarter of 2027.” It named the next movers: “ONE and HMM will be the next carriers to join the Suez influx,” it said, “leaving just Evergreen, Yang Ming and Zim as the only main carriers yet to make the switch”. Seatrade carried both quotes on 14 October.
So the Q1 2027 date is not just Gemini’s. It is the market’s working assumption. That matters because it means the capacity effect will not be limited to one alliance’s loops.
The pace so far has surprised some analysts. “Before the normalization started, my key hypothesis was that this would happen a lot faster,” Jensen said. “I’m positively surprised at the restraint we see from the carriers in terms of not making it a fast transition.” Habben Jansen said much the same about Hapag-Lloyd’s own approach: “So far, that has not caused too many problems, it’s been going well.”
There is one complication. Bimco noted that the return to Suez “has coincided with increased port congestion in Asia,” so “the full effect on supply/demand has yet to be seen.” Congestion holds ships in port and soaks up some capacity for a while. It slows the fall in rates. It does not stop it.

What forwarders should do now

First, plan for messy schedules from late November to January. New rotations, dropped calls and swapped ports mean missed connections and rolled boxes (cargo bumped to a later ship). Add buffer days to Asia–Europe and Asia–Med quotes for that window. Check every booking against the new port rotations, especially if you used Tangier on the old Gemini loops.
Second, watch European ports. When ships that went the long way and ships on the short route start arriving close together, terminals in North Europe and the Mediterranean can get bunched-up arrivals. Keep an eye on yard and berth delays at the hubs your cargo uses.
Third, think about transit times as a selling point again. A Suez routing is shorter than the Cape route. Once services settle, shippers who moved urgent freight to air or rail during the detour may move some of it back to ocean. That is an opportunity for forwarders who can quote reliable sea transits early.
Fourth, and most important, handle 2027 contracts carefully. Carriers will try to lock in annual rates before the full capacity release shows up in the spot market. Shippers should push for shorter terms, index-linked rates or review clauses tied to the Suez return. Forwarders buying block space should avoid committing to volume at today’s levels for the whole of 2027.

Our prediction

Our call: Drewry’s World Container Index rate for Shanghai–Rotterdam will be below $3,000 per 40ft container by the end of January 2027, despite carriers’ blank sailings and rate increase attempts around Chinese New Year. We also expect most 2027 Asia–North Europe annual contracts signed in Q1 to come in below their 2026 levels. If a new security incident sends ships back around Africa, this call is off. Habben Jansen’s “if there is no change” is doing real work in his sentence.

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