Asia-Europe container rates drop as Asian port congestion hits 4.3 million TEU, prompting carriers to return to the Suez Canal.
Asia-Europe container freight rates are falling as congestion at Asian ports pushes carriers to route more services back through the Suez Canal, according to Sogese's September Europe Container Market Update.
Drewry's World Container Index recorded the Shanghai-Genoa rate at US$4,368 per 40ft container on September 3, down 10% week on week. The Shanghai-Rotterdam rate fell 5% over the same period to US$4,092 per 40ft container.
The market is also signaling more available capacity in the weeks ahead. Blank sailings on the Asia-Europe route are expected to fall from four this week to one next week, a shift that typically points to loosening supply on the corridor.
For cargo owners, the movement carries a practical message: global fleet figures may no longer reflect the capacity available on a specific trade lane or at a specific port. Rates, demand, and vessel supply are increasingly diverging route by route, raising the value of lane-level visibility for cost control and planning.
Asian port congestion has reached 4.3 million TEU, according to Linerlytica data, surpassing the 4.0 million TEU stranded at the pandemic peak. Diversions around the Cape of Good Hope are absorbing an estimated 5% to 7% of global container capacity, roughly 1.7 to 2.4 million TEU.
MSC, Maersk, and Hapag-Lloyd have each announced partial returns to the Suez Canal in recent weeks. Because the Suez routing shortens voyage times, it can effectively add capacity on Asia-Europe services without deploying more vessels - a factor that helps explain the softer rates now emerging.
'The container market is becoming increasingly fragmented by trade corridor, with freight rates, cargo demand, and available capacity moving in different directions across major routes,' said Andrea Monti, CEO of Sogese S.r.l. 'Asia-Europe rates have started to soften from their mid-year highs while transpacific markets remain firmer, prompting carriers to adjust individual services and vessel deployments rather than manage capacity uniformly across their networks.'
Monti added that the selective resumption of Suez transits introduces another variable, since shorter voyages can lift effective capacity on the route without additional tonnage.
Recent network changes reflect this route-by-route approach. Ocean Alliance has revised its CPNW and MTE transpacific services, removing Qingdao, Ningbo, and Kwangyang from CPNW in favor of Kaohsiung and Yantian, while MTE will drop Haiphong and add Port Klang.
Maersk's seasonal TPX service, launched in May to meet peak-season demand between Vietnam, South Korea, and the US West Coast, is scheduled to end at the close of the third quarter.
The next phase of the market, Monti said, is likely to be shaped less by global supply and demand and more by how and where carriers deploy capacity and cargo. For shippers, forwarders, and importers managing cost and reliability across multiple lanes, that fragmentation reinforces the need to track conditions corridor by corridor rather than relying on headline global figures.
