Danish shipowner Maersk is considering a return to the Suez Canal, but has not set a date for this.
"Maersk will take steps to resume navigation along the East-West corridor via the Suez Canal and the Red Sea and over time normalise the transits on this route," the company said. "This will proceed as soon as conditions allow, with safety of our crew as the top priority."
Suez traffic has shrunk drastically since the start of the Yemen-based Houthi militant group's attacks in November 2023, with shipowners often preferring the route around the Cape of Good Hope. This makes for a longer voyage and higher bunker fuel consumption.
Maersk today signed a partnership agreement with the Suez Canal Authority (SCA), which itself indicated the shipowner's return might start as early as December. But Maersk told Argus it has not settled on a timeline. Its chief executive Vincent Clerc said earlier in November that any return was dependent on the Houthi ceasefire holding.
The SCA said today it has been in discussions with various shipowners and that container shipowner CMA CGM will return to the canal. The French company has not committed to a timeline, but its Benjamin Franklin transited the canal and the Bab el-Mandeb strait in early November, marking one of the first passages by a large containership owner since the Houthi attacks worsened. CMA CGM's Jules Verne has also passed through the canal in recent weeks.
To spur a return to general passage by key shipowners the SCA has adopted a package of flexible pricing policies that include a 15pc reduction for container ships with a tonnage exceeding 130,000t.
