<\/p>\n
According to new Alphaliner research, \u201cthe number of containerships that have opted to use the Cape route and bypass the Suez Canal has risen to a historic peace-time high,\u201d including at least 20 sailings on the Asia-Europe, Europe-Asia and North America east coast-Asia trades.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cA unique combination of a container tonnage surplus and rock-bottom bunker prices has increasingly prompted ocean carriers to avoid the canal \u2013 and thus its fees,\u201d the analyst noted today.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cRather unusually, even three westbound Asia-Europe headhaul sailings have opted for the Cape route, all operated by CMA CGM.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cCarriers very rarely choose this longer route for the time-sensitive headhaul, but the low bunker price and lack of demand in European markets, hit by the Covid-19 lockdowns, have suddenly made such moves viable,\u201d it added.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
As well as the three Ocean Alliance westbound sailings \u2013 two on the FAL3 service and one on the FAL1 \u2013 Alphaliner tracked nine Europe-Asia and eight North America east coast-Asia backhaul sailings avoiding Suez with vessels operated by Evergreen, MSC, ONE and Cosco.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Suez Canal charges vary according to the size of the vessel, its routeing, the number of containers carried and the proportion of laden boxes, but as a rule of thumb, a fully laden 20,000 teu container vessel on a headhaul Asia-Europe sailing could expect to pay around $700,000 in transit fees.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The distance difference between the two routes is around 3,500km on Singapore-Rotterdam sailing.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
In response to the moves, the SAC has announced cuts in transit fees, varying from around 17% for ships involved in European trades, to 60%-75% for vessels returning to Asia from the east coast of North America.<\/p>\n
gCaptain<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
According to new Alphaliner research, \u201cthe number of containerships that have opted to use the Cape route and bypass the Suez Canal has risen to a historic peace-time high,\u201d including at least 20 sailings on the Asia-Europe, Europe-Asia and North America east coast-Asia trades. \u201cA unique combination of a container tonnage surplus and rock-bottom bunker …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9340,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[1281,1923,2235,1291,5893,3088,1241,3974],"class_list":["post-9339","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-marine-world","tag-canal","tag-long","tag-lose","tag-million","tag-route","tag-set","tag-ships","tag-suez"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9339","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9339"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9339\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/9340"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}