NextFin News - Container lines are steering ships back through the Red Sea and Suez Canal in numbers not seen since the crisis began, betting that the corridor is safe enough to reclaim the 14-day shortcut between Asia and Europe — even though Houthi attacks on vessels have continued into August. On August 22, two of Maersk's largest containerships transited the Suez Canal together, the latest signal that the world's biggest carriers are testing a return to the route they abandoned in late 2023. The question is no longer whether the Red Sea will reopen, but whether this normalization can survive the next attack.
The Return Is Real, and It Is Accelerating
The evidence of a shift is accumulating across the major carriers. Maersk and Hapag-Lloyd, operating the Gemini Cooperation joint network, restored an additional service to the trans-Suez route in early August — the first service returned since Houthi rebels announced a blockade of Saudi-linked vessels and resumed attacks in July. On the ground, the Suez Canal Authority honored the Bangkok Maersk, a 17,480-TEU dual-fuel vessel, with a plaque ceremony marking its first transit, while the 19,076-TEU Mathilde Maersk led the northbound convoy the same day. The authority said 57 vessels transited that Saturday, totaling 2.8 million net tons, and put the savings from the Suez routing at up to 14 days compared with the detour around South America.
Maersk is not alone. Mediterranean Shipping Company sent seven box ships back through the canal in mid-August, with the vessels turning off their automatic identification system transponders — a practice known as "going dark" that carriers use to reduce targeting risk. Cosco reopened bookings on Red Sea services, and CMA CGM has quietly built the strongest presence of all: 199 vessels transiting the canal since the start of 2026, representing 25.2 million net tons, compared with 212 vessels for the entirety of 2025.
Traffic is rebuilding even if it has not fully recovered. Canal transit data showed approximately 1,090 transits in the four weeks ending August 20 — the highest volume since January 2024 — though that remains 41 percent below pre-crisis baselines. The gap between a functioning corridor and a normalized one is where the risk premium still lives.
The commercial logic is straightforward. The detour around the Cape of Good Hope has been absorbing roughly 2.5 million TEU of global container capacity, according to shipping analytics firm Xeneta — effectively tightening supply and propping up freight rates. Every ship that goes back through Suez releases that absorbed capacity back into the market.
Yet the security picture tells a different story. The Houthis resumed attacks on Red Sea vessels on July 22 after a nine-month pause, striking at least four oil tankers and prompting Saudi airstrikes against Houthi targets in Yemen — the kingdom's first such strikes since the 2022 truce. On August 11, a Houthi strike on a cargo ship in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait killed at least four crew members, and a second strike killed two members of Yemen's armed forces. A cargo ship was declared a constructive total loss after being hit by multiple projectiles off Yemen on August 18.
So the situation that has drawn ships back is not safety restored; it is risk recalibrated. Carriers are accepting that some attacks will continue, and betting that they will remain selective rather than systematic.
Why Carriers Are Willing to Take the Bet
The decision is being driven by three converging pressures, and only one of them is security.
First, the security calculus has shifted. The Houthis' attacks have remained concentrated on tankers and Saudi-linked targets rather than the large container vessels that dominate east-west trade. Saudi Arabia, the group's longtime foe, has pursued de-escalation even while conducting retaliatory strikes, and the kingdom's urgent need to keep its Red Sea oil exports flowing — the East-West pipeline from Abqaiq to Yanbu ran at its full 7 million barrels per day capacity after the Strait of Hormuz was blocked in March — gives Riyadh a strong incentive to keep the corridor open. For carriers, the threat has become manageable rather than existential.
Second, the economics of the detour are turning against the carriers. The Cape route burns more fuel, ties up vessels for weeks longer, and disrupts schedule reliability — costs that carriers absorbed while disruption premiums kept freight rates elevated. But those premiums are already eroding. The Drewry World Container Index recorded global liner rates falling 4.7% to $2,107 per 40-foot container in the week ended January 29, and the broader Containerized Freight Index stood at 3,409.63 points on August 26, up 11.32% over the past month but still far below the panic peaks of the crisis years. If rates are going to fall anyway, there is less reason to pay the Cape premium to defend them.
Third, and most important, Maersk is positioning for the next cycle. Chief Executive Vincent Clerc, speaking during the company's second-quarter 2026 results, made the clearest statement yet: "I believe that the conditions for a full return by 2026 are now in place. Unless something changes, the conditions are in place." The caveat matters — Clerc framed the return as conditional, not guaranteed — but the direction is unambiguous. Analysts following the carrier say Maersk could have all of its routes restored to the Suez–Red Sea corridor by the end of the year.
"We view this as the first step that will pave the way for a full return to the Red Sea by the end of this year."
Jyske Bank analyst Haider Anjum said after the initial July announcement. But he immediately flagged the cost: "A full return, and thus more efficient capacity management, combined with the prospect of new ships being delivered in 2027 and 2028, should put pressure on freight rates and, consequently, on shipping companies' earnings."
Hapag-Lloyd, for its part, has been careful to temper expectations, describing the August move as "a targeted adjustment for one selected service, not a general network-wide return." Nine other Maersk services that could benefit from the Red Sea route continue to sail around the Cape. The carriers are returning one service at a time, keeping the escape route open.
The Second-Order Collision: Normalization Meets Overcapacity
Here is the trade the market has not fully priced. A return to the Red Sea does not just shorten voyages — it unwinds the single biggest support for container freight rates over the past two years. And it does so precisely as a record fleet of new ships is about to arrive.
Kenneth Loh, a shipping analyst, projects global container ship capacity rising about 36% between 2023 and 2027, even as demand weakens. He estimates container shipping demand could contract 1.1% in 2026 if liners make a complete return to the Red Sea. Put those two numbers together and the imbalance is stark: capacity surging while the cargo base shrinks, at the exact moment the artificial scarcity created by the Cape detour dissolves.
This is why the market reaction to Red Sea normalization has been perverse. When Maersk and Hapag-Lloyd announced their initial return on July 6, shares of both carriers fell on the prospect that restored routing would free capacity and compress the freight premiums that had supported earnings. The logic is cold but inescapable: what is good for global trade — shorter transit times, lower shipping costs, more reliable schedules — is bad for carrier earnings when the industry is already staring at structural overcapacity. Bank of America analysts have described the problem in exactly those terms: "structural overcapacity issues" at a time when supply growth is already outpacing demand.
The winners in this trade are not the shipowners. They are the cargo owners — retailers and manufacturers who have spent two years absorbing longer lead times and higher rates, and who are now well accustomed to planning around extended transits. A normalized Suez hands them back two weeks of supply-chain velocity and, eventually, lower freight bills. The losers are the carriers, whose record 2023–2024 profits were built on disruption, and Egypt, whose canal toll revenue — $449 million on 1,315 vessels since the start of 2026, up from $368 million on 1,243 vessels a year earlier, according to Suez Canal Authority chairman Ossama Rabiee — depends on traffic volumes that could face fresh pressure if rates collapse and carriers become more selective again.
The Counter-Thesis: This Reopening Is Fragile, and It Has Broken Before
The strongest argument against the normalization trade is that it has already failed this year. Earlier in 2026, after a joint US and Israeli military operation against Iran and subsequent retaliatory action, carriers that had begun returning to Suez reversed course. CMA CGM abandoned a decision to reroute its India–Mediterranean service through the canal. Xeneta chief analyst Peter Sand said at the time that the escalation would "shatter hopes of a large-scale return of container shipping to the Red Sea in 2026."
"If Houthi militia resume attacks, as now seems likely, carriers will reverse the decision to return services to the Red Sea and prioritise the safety of crew, ship and cargo. Any plans for a phased return of container shipping to the Red Sea in 2026 will be shelved until the security situation becomes clearer."
Sand said then. The attacks he anticipated did resume — on July 22. And yet the container ships kept coming. That is the crux of the current moment: carriers have absorbed a level of violence that, months earlier, would have triggered an immediate reversal, and they have kept sailing.
This does not mean the risk is gone. It means the threshold for reversal has moved. The current calculus holds only so long as attacks remain concentrated on tankers and Saudi-linked targets, and so long as no large container vessel suffers a catastrophic strike with mass casualties. The moment a big boxeship is hit, the kind of incident that forced MSC to reroute its fleet via the Cape after its United VIII was attacked in December 2023, the phased return stops.
The specific signal that would break this thesis is clear and observable: a confirmed Houthi strike on a large container vessel — not a tanker, not a bulk carrier — resulting in casualties or a constructive total loss, or a formal Houthi re-imposition of a blockade on commercial container traffic through the Bab el-Mandeb. Either event would trigger the reversal Sand described, and it would happen within days, not months.
What to Watch: Three Horizons
Short term (weeks): Watch the weekly freight indexes and carrier announcements. The SCFI and Drewry World Container Index will show whether the return is already being priced into spot rates. Any carrier statement expanding the number of services returning to Suez — or pulling one back — is the fastest read on the security assessment.
Medium term (months): The key variable is the Houthi target set. If attacks remain confined to tankers and Saudi-linked vessels, the container return accelerates toward Clerc's year-end timeline. If the target set widens to include large container ships, the phased return stalls. Saudi Arabia's restraint — or lack of it — in responding to attacks on its oil facilities is the lever that moves this.
Long term (years): This is where the structural call matters. The Red Sea disruption was a cyclical shock — a geopolitical event that absorbed capacity and will release it again. But the risk it revealed is structural. The Houthis have proven they can close the world's most important chokepoint with relatively cheap weapons, and that capability does not disappear. Even in a full-return scenario, carriers will keep the Cape option alive, and shippers will pay a persistent risk premium. The corridor reopens; the risk premium does not fully close.
The base case is a continued phased return through the end of 2026, with freight rates grinding lower as capacity normalizes and the newbuild wave arrives in 2027–2028. The upside case for carriers is an escalation that forces ships back around the Cape, briefly reviving disruption premiums. The downside case is a catastrophic attack on a container vessel that triggers a full reversal and leaves carriers exposed to overcapacity without the rate support that made 2023–2024 so profitable.
The Red Sea is reopening not because it is safe, but because the cost of avoiding it has finally exceeded the cost of sailing through it. That arithmetic can change with a single missile — and every carrier now sailing the corridor is betting, service by service, that it will not.
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