PARIS
\nThe closure of the Strait of Hormuz as well as tensions in the Red Sea are reshaping trade routes, with Africa becoming a hub of global container ship traffic, according to logistics and maritime sources.
\nOver the past two months, the blockade has also pushed shipowners to find alternative land corridors to deliver foodstuffs and manufactured goods by truck, as they can no longer reach the Gulf\u2019s coastal countries by sea.\u2013What are the alternative routes for delivering to Gulf countries?
\nThe Saudi port of Jeddah on the Red Sea is becoming a new regional \u201chub,\u201d 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 such as Sharjah, Bahrain and Kuwait, which have not been served by sea for the past two months.
\n\u201cThe port of Jeddah is not at all sized to handle such import volumes and a port congestion situation is emerging,\u201d Arthur Barillas de The, cofounder of freight forwarder Ovrsea, told media. According to data from Kpler Marine Traffic, 11 container ships were docked in Jeddah on Thursday, with nine waiting, and an average wait of 36 hours before unloading compared to 17 hours the previous week.
\nShipowners have said they will use three ports outside the Strait of Hormuz \u2014 Oman\u2019s 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 sending goods to Baghdad and Basra in Iraq, while a Turkish corridor is also allowing goods into northern Iraq.
\n– On international routes, why are Asia-Europe container ships avoiding the Suez Canal?\u2013The situation started well before the war in Iran but is very much connected to the conflict. Avoiding the Red Sea from the Bab Al-Mandeb Strait to the Suez Canal dates back to November 19, 2023 and the first attack on a container ship by Iran-backed Houthi militias from the coast of Yemen, said CyclOpe, a specialist commodities publication.
\nThe rerouting of ships has now become systematic, said Ronan Boudet, head of container intelligence at Kpler. They skirt around Africa by following its eastern coast as far as the Cape of Good Hope in southern South Africa before heading back north toward Europe and the Mediterranean.
\n\u201cWith the current situation in the Gulf, we have put several more coins in the machine, it\u2019s not going to get better anytime soon,\u201d Edouard Louis-Dreyfus, chairman of French shipping giant Louis Dreyfus Armateurs, told media. \u201cToday, 70 percent of the freight traffic that went through the Red Sea in 2023 is being rerouted via the Cape of Good Hope,\u201d added Yves Guillo, a supply chain expert at Efeso, a management consultancy in Paris.
\nAccording to data from the International Monetary Fund\u2019s PortWatch platform based on ships\u2019 GPS signals, commercial vessel traffic via the Cape of Good Hope has more than tripled in three years, while traffic through the Bab Al-Mandeb Strait has fallen by more than half. Between March 1 and April 24 this year, an average of 20 commercial vessels went round the Cape of Good Hope every day compared with six in the same period in 2023.
\nBy comparison, traffic in the Red Sea has plummeted: from 18 transits per day through Bab Al-Mandeb between March and April 2023, the average fell to five three years later.\u2013What are the consequences?\u2013Transport times have lengthened between Asia and Europe by an average of two weeks and costs have risen because 30 to 50 percent more fuel is needed and 10 to 20 percent more ships to ensure the same frequency of service, said Guillo.
\nThe average price to transport a standard 40-foot container on the main shipping routes increased by 14 percent in April compared to the same period last year, he added, citing changes in the Drewry freight index. Large differences exist between routes: some African ports are seeing their activity increase.
\nThe Tanger Med Port Authority said it handled 11 million standard containers in 2025 \u2014 up 8.4 percent. But Egypt lost toll revenues from the Suez Canal, which make up a large part of its income. According to CyclOpe, in 2024 it lost $7 billion \u2014 a drop of more than 60 percent compared with 2023. \u2014 DNA<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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 of global container ship traffic, according to logistics and maritime sources. Over the past two months, the blockade has also pushed shipowners to find alternative land corridors to deliver foodstuffs […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":544189,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-544178","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-world"],"yoast_head":"\n