Maersk has stated on their Network of the Future page that it will scrap planned use of the dangerous Red Sea route in 2025 until safety of crews and cargo can be confidently assured, citing "As the situation remains highly dynamic, Hapag-Lloyd and Maersk will return to the Red Sea as soon as it is safe to do so."
While the Suez offering details remain live for now, it is not realistically aligned with active geo-political concerns. Despite recent rumors that carriers may soon experiment with a return to the Suez, we have yet to see any actualization in vessel behaviors or consistent representation in long-term schedules so far.
In a perfect example of cold feet, the eeSea team picked up signs from CMA schedules beginning October 24th that the CMA CGM PELLEAS - deployed on the CMA - INDAMEX - would be the first vessel to transit the Suez by late November, followed by others on the India - US East Coast service. The news was also reported by Gavin van Marle of The Loadstar on November 06. However, before the end of the week was out, CMA had once again dropped all future Suez transits up through January 1, 2025 - a start date we would not be suprised to see pushed back once more.
Some more food for thought from Martina Li of The Loadstar on November 11th covered whether or not it would even be profitable for carriers to resume transit through the Suez, if safety could be assured - lending even more strength to the argument that this is something we are unlikely to see at scale in Q1 of the coming year.
From an operational standpoint, our team has decided to scrap the dual-service versions approach for GEMINI services previously taken in order to accomodate the will-they-won't-they philosophy for Suez vs. Cape of Good Hope routings in 2025. As we approach the start of our new networks in February 2025, you may see a steady culling of these Suez-transit specific versions on the eeSea app and data streams.
eeSea Signals
- CMA CGM PELLEAS - deployed on the CMA - INDAMEX
- CMA - INDAMEX
- Port Inbound Traffic Stats hosted by Tableau
- Port Inbound Map hosted by Tableau