Drewry: Red Sea Containership Crossing on the Rise in International Shipping News 12/03/2026 Following the 28 February start of the Iran/Middle East conflict, the safety of containerships in the Middle East Gulf, in the Red Sea and in the wider Middle East/Indian Ocean region has suddenly been questioned, affecting the routing and the number of containership calls in the region. In the 2-week period ended 8 March, 64 containerships transited through Suez, up from 44 in the 2-week period ended 22 February. This may be an early indicator that carriers are routing more cargo via the Red Sea, replacing the previous routing via the Middle East Gulf. The major carriers have announced the suspension of Asia-Europe services sailing all the way through the Red Sea, but they continue to sail via the Suez Canal to the northern part of the Red Sea, to serve the Saudi Arabia market. The number of containerships calling at the port of Jebel Ali, the largest container port in the Middle East. has dropped from 100 calls a week on average in February to 18 in the week ended 8 March and none in the last 3 days, according to the Drewry AIS tracking. Meanwhile, the number of vessels sailing around the Cape of Good Hope rose to 314 in the 2-week period ended 8 March , up from 309 in the previous fortnight. The Cape still remains by far the main route to connect Asia and Europe, according to the Red Sea Diversion Tracker. Drewry will provide updated forecasts of container traffic demand, bunker prices and freight rates in the Drewry Container Forecaster, including rational scenarios to consider in planning. Drewry is tracking 5 indicators which enable stakeholders to monitor the progress of the return to the Suez Canal in its Container Capacity Insight: “Best case” Asia-Europe transit times, Port congestion (vessel waiting times), Import dwell times, Schedule reliability and Carrier capacity. Drewry’s Red Sea Diversion Tracker delivers timely intelligence to shippers, carriers, ports and other stakeholders on the evolving structure of carrier networks in the region. This tracker page will be updated fortnightly (every other Tuesday). Source: Drewry 2026-03-12 hellenicshippingnews... window.___gcfg = {lang: 'en-US'}; (function(w, d, s) { function go(){ var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0], load = function(url, id) { if (d.getElementById(id)) {return;} js = d.createElement(s); js.src = url; js.id = id; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs); }; load('//connect.facebook.net/en/all.js#xfbml=1', 'fbjssdk'); load('https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js', 'gplus1js'); load('//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js', 'tweetjs'); } if (w.addEventListener) { w.addEventListener("load", go, false); } else if (w.attachEvent) { w.attachEvent("onload",go); } }(window, document, 'script')); tweet Share