Container Shipping Rates Split as Suez Return Cuts Europe Prices

Two markets under one index

Drewry's World Container Index (WCI) fell 2% to $4,351 per 40ft container on 8 October 2026. Demand eased during China's Golden Week, and rates dropped on both the Transpacific and Asia–Europe trades.1 The composite number makes the market look fairly calm. The routes inside it are moving in opposite directions.

Asia–Europe rates have fallen for 13 weeks in a row. Shanghai–Rotterdam slipped to $3,337 and Shanghai–Genoa held at $3,696.1 Over the same period, US-bound cargo became much more expensive. Shanghai–Los Angeles stood at $7,624 and Shanghai–New York at $10,220.1 One timeline that compares 9 July with 8 October puts Rotterdam down 32% and Genoa down 43%. Los Angeles rose 18% and New York 29% over the same stretch, which left the composite down only 6%.28

This split is the main story in container shipping this autumn. Procurement teams that track only the composite will misread their own costs.

Six years of spikes and crashes

The current turbulence is easier to read against the past six years. Drewry's index averaged about $1,420 per 40ft box in 2019. It reached a record $10,377 on 23 September 2021, more than seven times that level.11 The 2021 shock came from demand. Pandemic consumers shifted spending from services to goods, and imports grew faster than ports, ships and container fleets could handle. Boxes piled up in the wrong places, which cut usable capacity even further.11 Individual lanes were far more extreme than the composite. Asia to North America's East Coast hit about $22,000 per 40ft container in 2021, and Asia to North Europe and the Mediterranean about $14,000.20

The crash that followed was just as dramatic. The index fell 87% to $1,342 by October 2023.11 Before the Red Sea attacks began, global container rates had dropped to less than half their 2022 levels, and carriers were in a slump that pushed several companies into bankruptcy.19

The next shock came from geopolitics, not consumer demand. From December 2023, Houthi attacks pushed most container lines away from the Red Sea and around the Cape of Good Hope. The detour added a week or more to Asia–Europe voyages.11 The OECD's transport forum noted that the cost of the detour itself was modest compared with the price response. Rerouting a median-size ship added roughly $300 per imported 40ft container, while rates on Asia–Europe and Asia–North America rose by around $1,800–$4,200 per box.12 That gap suggests carriers were pricing scarcity, not just recovering costs.

The Red Sea spike peaked at $5,937 in July 2024.11 Lloyd's List described it as the second-highest point in the industry's history, behind only the pandemic.18 UNCTAD named the Red Sea diversions as the main driver of 2024's rate surge and reported that its Shanghai benchmark averaged about 149% more in 2024 than in 2023.14 Rates then drifted down again and reached an 18-month low of $1,669 in early October 2025.3

What drove 2026

The 2026 rise looks different from earlier ones. The WCI roughly tripled from its October 2025 low of $1,651 and peaked at $4,639 on 9 July 2026. One detailed timeline attributes the climb mainly to an Iran war that drove up fuel costs and emergency surcharges.11 Weekly tracking shows the index around $2,200 in April, then rising sharply in May. It went from $2,286 to $2,712 in three weeks, including the year's steepest weekly gain, and passed $4,200 by late July.3 Trackers disagree slightly on the exact top. One weekly series records a high of $4,526 in late August, but it samples the index only on its own publication dates.3

Coverage is less consistent on the Red Sea. One analysis from March argued that the escalating Iran conflict had made reopening unlikely in 2026, and noted that Maersk twice tried and then reversed Suez transits on an Asia–Mediterranean service.25 One retail-focused account went further and said most Asia–Europe vessels had been on the Cape route since early 2026.22 By late summer, however, carriers were clearly heading back. In September Maersk was reported to have restored about a third of its normal Suez volume, on four of 13 relevant services.23 Maersk and Hapag-Lloyd moved their India–Europe ME2 service back to the Suez route that month.28 Drewry now calls the "faster-than-expected" Suez return the biggest threat to carriers' efforts to hold rates up.1 Suez transits in week 39 were 68% higher than a year earlier.5

The best reading is that the Cape diversion was the market's main prop through mid-2026, and that it is now being removed.

Overcapacity reasserts itself

The Suez return matters so much because the fleet is far larger than the cargo it carries. Ships ordered during the pandemic profit boom have been arriving in volume. One estimate puts 2024–2026 deliveries at more than 800 vessels and over 7 million TEU. It also says fleet growth runs near 8% a year, against demand growth of about 3%.25 Bloomberg Intelligence expects container ship capacity to grow about 36% between 2023 and 2027.29

Estimates of how much capacity a Suez return frees up vary widely, which helps explain the uncertainty around rates. Maersk CEO Vincent Clerc put the figure at 6–7% of global container capacity. He also warned that falling rates could halve the company's 2026 earnings, and the shares fell 5.5% that day.26 One analysis of the Cape route's effect on ship rotations estimated the effective capacity loss at roughly 10%.25 Another commentary cited BIMCO at about 3%. Whichever figure is right, the direction is clear: each returning ship adds capacity without a single new vessel being built.28

Contract markets reflected this months before spot rates did. By early 2026, long-term Far East–Mediterranean contracts had fallen 25% from end-2025 to about $2,308 per FEU, and Far East–North Europe contracts 10% to about $2,010, the lowest since before the Red Sea crisis.21 In effect, carriers were cutting prices to secure committed volume ahead of capacity they expected to return.23

Why the Transpacific defies gravity

If Asia–Europe is the overcapacity story, the US trades show that disruption can still raise prices on specific routes. Rates into the US rose from July while European rates fell, and coverage links this to fuel costs, port congestion and Panama Canal draft limits that affect East Coast services.28 Another analysis cites an extended peak season, blank sailings and new Panama Canal surcharges from September. It argues the transpacific rise "has nothing to do with the Red Sea."23

Carriers are also managing capacity actively. Drewry expects 34 blank sailings on major East–West trades from mid-October to mid-November, a 5% cancellation rate.2 Transpacific blank sailings fell from eleven to four week over week, which signals more capacity coming back after the holiday.1 The extended US–China trade truce could support a rebound in US-bound demand.1

For US importers, the year-on-year comparison is stark. On 1 October, Shanghai–Los Angeles was up 257% from a year earlier and Shanghai–New York up 226%, against 166% for the composite.9 Freightos' global index stood lower, at $3,343 on 2 October.9 That gap is a reminder that different benchmarks can give quite different readings of the same week.

What it means for logistics costs

Shippers should take three practical points from this.

First, spot and contract costs are moving on different schedules. Spot indices show what an unbooked box costs this week, and contract rates usually follow with a lag. A falling index gives buyers leverage, and a rising one sets a deadline.3 Companies negotiating 2027 contracts on Asia–Europe are bargaining against expected capacity growth. That normalisation is still incomplete, though, and CMA CGM has already reversed one plan to bring Asia–Europe services back through the Red Sea.23

Second, the inflation risk is real but uneven. The OECD estimated in 2024 that a sustained 100% rise in freight rates could add close to 5 percentage points to OECD import price inflation, and about 0.4 points to consumer inflation after roughly a year.12 In 2026 that pressure falls mainly on US-bound goods, while European importers get relief.

Third, the market has not stabilised. It has moved from one kind of disruption to another. Analysts have warned that a sudden Red Sea return could briefly cause port congestion as Suez and Cape arrivals reach Europe at the same time, before rates fall further.24 A new attack would reverse that path. One forecast warns that renewed diversions could lift Asia–Europe rates by 20–30% within weeks.21

The outlook

Carriers want higher freight-all-kinds rates in the second half of October, but Drewry says it is unclear whether they will stick, and it expects rates to hold steady in the near term.1 Our reading is that Asia–Europe is heading back toward the overcapacity correction that Gulf analysts said had only been "delayed by crisis."29 The transpacific premium looks fragile because it depends on fuel prices, congestion and canal limits. None of those has the lasting weight of a fleet that keeps growing faster than demand.

Since 2020, every spike has had a different cause: a goods boom, a war at sea, and a war that drove up fuel. Each crash came once ships were freed up again.11 With Suez traffic climbing and new vessels still arriving, the conditions for the next drop are already building. The main open question is how quickly it reaches the transpacific trades.