PARIS: The closure of the Strait of Hormuz as well as tensions in the Red Sea are reshaping trade routes with Africa becoming a hub for global container ship traffic, according to logistics and maritime sources.
Over the past two months, the blockade has also pressured shipowners to find alternative land corridors to deliver food and manufactured goods by truck, as they can no longer reach Gulf littoral countries by sea.
What are the alternative routes for delivery to the Gulf countries?
The Saudi port of Jeddah on the Red Sea is becoming a new regional “hub”, where ships from maritime giants MSC, CMA CGM, Maersk and Cosco arrive via the Suez Canal.
Cargo then leaves by truck along a desert highway to deliver to places like Sharjah, Bahrain and Kuwait, which have not been served by sea for the past two months.
“The port of Jeddah is not at all sized to handle such import volumes and a port congestion situation is emerging,” Arthur Barillas de The, co-founder of freight forwarder Ovrsea, told AFP.
According to data from Kpler Marine Traffic, 11 container ships docked in Jeddah on Thursday, with nine waiting, and an average waiting time of 36 hours before unloading, compared to 17 hours the previous week.
The shipowners have said they will use three ports outside the Strait of Hormuz – Oman’s Sohar and the UAE ports of Khorfakkan and Fujairah, which are connected by land from the United Arab Emirates.
The port of Aqaba in Jordan serves as a base for shipping goods to Baghdad and Basra in Iraq, while a Turkish corridor also allows goods into northern Iraq.
On international routes, why do Asia-Europe container ships avoid the Suez Canal?
The situation started long before the war in Iran, but is largely connected to the conflict.
Avoiding the Red Sea from the Bab al-Mandeb Strait to the Suez Canal dates back to Nov. 19, 2023, and the first attack on a container ship by Iran-backed Houthi militias off the coast of Yemen, said CyclOpe, a commodity republic specialist.
The diversion of ships has now become systematic, said Ronan Boudet, head of container intelligence at Kpler.
They circumnavigate Africa by following its east coast as far as the Cape of Good Hope in southern South Africa before returning north towards Europe and the Mediterranean.
“With the current situation in the Gulf, we have put several more coins in the machine, it is not going to get better any time soon,” Edouard Louis-Dreyfus, chairman of French shipping giant Louis Dreyfus Armateurs, told AFP.
“Today, 70% of the freight traffic that passed through the Red Sea in 2023 will be diverted via the Cape of Good Hope,” added Yves Guillo, a supply chain expert at Efeso, a management consultancy in Paris.
According to data from the International Monetary Fund’s PortWatch platform based on ships’ GPS signals, commercial ship traffic via the Cape of Good Hope has more than tripled in three years, while traffic through the Bab al-Mandeb Strait has dropped by more than half.
Between March 1 and April 24 this year, an average of 20 commercial vessels rounded the Cape of Good Hope each day, compared with six during the same period in 2023.
By comparison, traffic in the Red Sea has plummeted: From 18 transits a day through Bab al-Mandeb between March and April 2023, the average dropped to five three years later.
What are the consequences?
Transport times have lengthened between Asia and Europe by an average of two weeks, and costs have increased because 30 to 50% more fuel and 10 to 20% more ships are needed to ensure the same frequency, Guillo said.
The average price to transport a standard 40-foot container on the main shipping routes increased by 14% in April compared to the same period last year, he added, citing changes in the Drewry freight index.
There are big differences between routes: some African ports are seeing their activity increase. The Tanger Med Port Authority said it was handling 11 million standard containers by 2025 – an increase of 8.4%.
But Egypt lost toll revenue from the Suez Canal, which makes up a large part of the country’s revenue. According to CyclOpe, in 2024 it lost $7 billion – a drop of more than 60% compared to 2023.
