About 19% of Asia–Europe capacity now transits the Suez Canal, after moves by Maersk, Hapag-Lloyd and MSC. Two years ago it was effectively none. Contract season is opening while that number is in the middle of moving, and the range it could land in between now and January is wide enough to make a twelve-month rate look very different in March than it does today.
The uncomfortable part is that the risk is not directional. It is arithmetic.
The demand number that is not a demand number
One projection has container demand contracting 8.7% year on year in the first half of 2027, against underlying cargo growth of 6.6%. Both of those can be true at once because they measure different things.
Cargo volume is boxes. Demand, in the sense that sets freight rates, is tonne-miles — boxes multiplied by the distance they travel. Routing Asia–Europe around the Cape rather than through Suez adds roughly ten to fifteen days each way. For two years, that extra distance absorbed ships the market did not otherwise need, and the industry priced as though the tonnage had disappeared.
It had not. It was parked in the Indian Ocean.
Unwind the diversion and every returning loop hands capacity back. CMA CGM's INDAMEX shortened its round trip by two weeks to 77 days and freed two ships doing it. Roughly one ship per loop per direction is the rule of thumb, and it applies across dozens of services.
So the 8.7% is not a forecast that people will stop buying things. It is a forecast that the same cargo will need fewer ships.
Why the timing is awkward rather than merely uncertain
Long-term Asia–Europe contracts are typically negotiated between October and December for a January start. If the Suez return is still partial when you sign — which, on current trajectory, it will be — you are pricing a supply-constrained market for a year that may be oversupplied by its second quarter.
The reverse risk exists and is worth stating honestly. Carriers have gone back through the canal and then quietly rerouted again when the security assessment changed. Maersk transited on MECL1 in December 2025 without announcing it until afterwards, which tells you how tentative these decisions still are. If the return stalls or reverses, spot spikes and anyone without a contract pays for it.
Which is the actual shape of the decision: a moderate, slow loss on a contract signed too high, against a sharp, fast loss on being uncovered in a disruption. Those are not symmetric, and that asymmetry is why I would not go uncovered.
What I would sign, and what I would not
Cover volume, not price, for as long as you can. Space commitments and MQC without a fixed all-in rate keep you protected against a spike while leaving room to reprice.
Push the signature date to late October or November. Two more months of spot data will tell you whether the Suez share is heading for 40% or 80%, and that single number is worth more than anything in the negotiation itself.
If you must sign a fixed rate now, get a quarterly review clause with a defined index trigger — a named index, a stated threshold, and a mechanism, not a vague commitment to discuss. Carriers are more willing to give this in a market where they expect rates to fall than in one where they do not.
And split the year. Locking Q1 and Q2 at a fixed rate while leaving Q3 and Q4 index-linked is a boring answer that has aged well through most of the last decade.
Separately, watch what happens to transit times as loops move, because your inventory planning is built on them. Asia to North Europe stretched to about 52 days at the worst of the diversion against 40 pre-crisis; Mediterranean went from 34 to 49. Those come back in steps, not all at once, and the lane transit data is where you will see it before the carriers republish their schedules.
The tell to watch for is blank sailings on Asia–Europe in October. If carriers start withdrawing capacity while loops are still returning, they have seen the same arithmetic and are trying to manage it. If they do not, they are betting the return stalls.
