The ongoing Red Sea crisis has significantly affected the ports of Jeddah and King Abdullah, as ocean liners have halted port calls there to avoid attacks by Iran-aligned Houthi militants.

"We are now more than half a year on from the beginning of the Red Sea crisis, and the severe impact on the container shipping industry continues unabated," the Danish maritime data company added.

"In the Red Sea, the most impacted ports were Jeddah and King Abdullah Port."

The Copenhagen-based Sea-Intelligence said in a new analysis that carriers stopped calling King Abdullah Port on their deep-sea services from January 2024 onwards, while Jeddah saw the sharpest decline of -74% month-on-month (M/M) from December 2023 to January 2024.

Even after a slight improvement in July 2024, the port is averaging just 37 calls per month compared to the pre-crisis average of 135 monthly calls.

In East MED, Piraeus and Port Said were the most impacted, while in the Gulf of Aden, Salalah saw deep-sea port calls drop by nearly -50% in January-February 2024. 

 [Source: Sea-Intelligence]

Citing data in Figure 1, Sea-Intelligence noted the number of deep-sea port calls in the major regions closest to the Suez Canal – East Mediterranean (East MED), Gulf of Aden, and the Red Sea itself.

While the total number of monthly deep-sea port calls in East MED were already trending downwards pre-crisis, the M/M drop in January 2024 was quite significant at -22%.

"Compared to the pre-crisis average, the drop in 2024 has been -33%," it said, adding that a similar -33% drop in the average monthly calls was also seen for the Gulf of Aden, from roughly 100 monthly calls to 60-70 in 2024.

"Like East MED, port calls in the region have been recovering, albeit very slowly," Sea-Intelligence said.

In particular, it pointed out that the Red Sea region—where Jeddah and King Abdullah Port are—saw the most severe impact of the crisis, with an 85% drop in the average number of deep-sea port calls in 2024.

"The figure dropped from over 200 calls per month to under 40 in January-June 2024," commented Alan Murphy, CEO of Sea-Intelligence.

"The figure rose to 60 calls in July 2024, which was double that of the previous months. However, it remains to be seen if this will continue or if this is a temporary uptick," he added.

In terms of schedule reliability, the Sea-Intelligence analysis said the Red Sea and East Mediterranean are back to the pre-crisis levels, while the Gulf of Aden is still lagging.