A number of ships appear to be changing course to avoid Egypt’s blocked Suez Canal and sail around the Cape of Good Hope instead.
The trip from Asia to Europe around the southern tip of Africa is longer, but operators may calculate their vessels will make better time on that route than waiting for the Ever Given to be refloated in Suez.
The backlog of ships caused by the container ship’s grounding in the Suez Canal has reached 248, according to experts from Lloyds List Intelligence.
The Ever Given, a Panama-flagged ship operated by Taiwan’s Evergreen and owned by Shoei Kisen KK, a Japanese company, became wedged sideways across the vital waterway on Tuesday.
It comes as security experts voice fears about the potential for piracy and politically motivated sabotage as scores of ships remain stuck in two of the most volatile regions on Earth: the eastern Mediterranean and the Horn of Africa.
The blockage of the Suez Canal by the MV Ever Given could cost the world economy $10bn (£7.25bn) a week, according to a top insurer.
A study by Europe’s biggest insurer Allianz also found that each week of gridlock chips about 0.2 to 0.4 percentage points off annual trade growth.
“The problem is that the Suez Canal blockage is the straw that breaks global trade’s back,” the study’s authors wrote.
“First, suppliers’ delivery times have lengthened since the start of the year and are now longer in Europe than during the peak of the CovidD-19 pandemic.”
Second, the study said that the length of delivery times in the US was twice as bad, because inventories were depleted on expectations that Joe Biden’s huge stimulus package would boost demand.
Rates for freight carriage could rise even as parts of the shipping sector have been struggling if the Ever Given disruption continues much longer, an expert has said.
Claire Grierson, senior director of tanker research at shipbrokers Simpson Spence Young, said: “The impact of the Suez Canal blockage on the tanker market is varying by segment.
“For very large crude carriers, it has yet to reach a point where replacement vessels for ships affected on a route through the canal are needed, but if the issue is not resolved over the weekend then it will become problematic.
“It is having more of an impact on the Suezmax sector [ships designed to fit through the canal while being as large as possible] where rates are starting to rise and where a lengthy blockage will more quickly affect vessel supply balances.
“Some vessels in this segment [sail] northward through the Suez Canal, after completing voyages in the East, to lift cargoes from the Black Sea or the Mediterranean to go to Asia again, so a sustained canal disruption would have a significant impact on this voyage chain.
“Middle East Gulf clean tanker rates [for petroleum transport, rather than crude] had already started to trend higher prior to the blockage and charterers are asking for voyage options with routing via the Cape of Good Hope and the Suez Canal.
“This Cape rerouting could add as much as 20 days to a voyage from the Middle East Gulf to Rotterdam that would normally go via Suez.
“If the canal disruption is prolonged, the rerouting of tankers around the Cape of Good Hope will add greatly to voyage times, affecting vessel supply replenishment for some regions and this will boost freight rates at a time when many tanker segments have been struggling. If replacement vessels are needed, this will also cause rates to jump.”