Sea-Intelligence said the sharp escalation of the security situation in the Bab-al-Mandeb strait off the coast of Yemen, where multiple vessels have now been attacked off the Yemeni coast by the Houthis, resulting in several major shipping lines placing their vessels on hold not to pass the Red Sea, is rendering the Suez routing unavailable for an unknown period.

In a new analysis, the Danish maritime analysis firm said that while these diversions would cause a drag on various routes, they would have a notable impact on trade between the Far East and North America's East Coast.

"While the impact of this will be on multiple trades, particularly troublesome is on the Far East to North America East Coast (NAEC) trade, as there has been a shift towards the Suez routing due to the drought in the Panama Canal, making a reversal to the Panama routing impossible," noted Alan Murphy, CEO of Sea-Intelligence.

For the Africa routing, the report pointed out that the increase in sailing times will be "quite substantial," especially for services to the Mediterranean (MED).

"Using a standard speed of 17 knots during the deviation, we are looking at a likely increase in transit time of roughly 9 days on Far East-North Europe, 14 days to MED, and 5 days to NAEC," it said.

For a full roundtrip, however, the report noted that additional vessels would need to be injected into services on these trades to maintain a weekly departure.

Sea-Intelligence said using the number of services on the impacted trades, the average vessel size on each service, and an additional vessel for every 7-day increase in sailing time, it is possible to calculate how many additional vessels are needed on each trade.

"What this also allows us to do is to calculate the total additional nominal capacity that is needed to cater for sustained round-Africa services," it added, as shown in Figure 1.

[Source: Sea-Intelligence]