News / Prepare for port congestion when Suez transits return – maybe new year

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Investment from European importers and their freight forwarders in inland container storage capacity could be key to alleviating a possible outbreak of port congestion, in the event of Suez Canal transits resuming.

During a roundtable discussion with Kuehne + Nagel’s EVP of sea logistics, Michael Aldwell, and analyst Lars Jensen, Hapag-Lloyd CEO Rolf Haben Jansen argued that the worst congestion pinch points would likely be at terminal gates and yards, rather than at the quayside.

“The real problem will be the capacity of our customers to pull inventory from the terminal yards – that’s the thing that worries me even more than the prospect of vessel bunching,” he said.

Mr Aldwell said: “The primary advice to customers is that you need to prepare: you need to have an off-dock storage ready; you need to be prepared with yard and warehouse capacity; so that when that happens, you know how you’re going to act.

“Waiting for it to happen is a recipe for difficulty, because everybody will be in the market looking for a truck and over-the-road intermodal capacity to try and manage it,” he added.

The prospect of widespread port congestion in Europe is now thought to be more a certainty than a possibility, with Mr Aldwell outlining the most likely scenario when Suez Canal transits resume

“The first step is you’re going to see vessels arriving both through Suez and around the Cape of Good Hope; so, more than likely, you end up with vessel-bunching and some port congestion, which is going to exacerbate the existing challenging port conditions in the north continent and other parts of Europe and the Mediterranean – so that will create further congestion and some delays,” he said.

Plenty of shipping executives, among them Mr Habben Jansen, have called for the industry to stage a phased return to Suez to reduce congestion, but he explained this would be far easier said than done.

“Returning to Suez will be difficult. We will do everything we can to try and do it in an orderly fashion, but I fully realise that many of our customers will not want that.

“They just want their boxes on the road, going through Suez. And those two things are just not so compatible,” he said.

And although a possible timeline for a resumption of Suez transits remains out of the industry’s grasp currently, Mr Jensen suggested that in terms of carriers reorganising their networks, the most optimistic dateline would be after Chinese New Year.

That annual two-week shutdown begins on 17 February – almost three months from today.

He said: “Let’s say we are into 2026 and [the Houthi ceasefire] looks like it’s going to hold. After Chinese New Year would be the best time to mitigate the problems of vessel-bunching and port congestion problems in Europe.

“If the transition happens in the slack season after CNY, then at least the vessel-bunching will take place in a period when quite a few of the services have blanked sailings – it’s easier to realign when you have a lower demand flow coming in.

“It’s not going to solve the problems by any means, but it’s going to limit some associated with the switchover,” he added.

However, he said it would not just be the Asia-Europe trades that would be affected by any severe outbreak of European port congestion.

“I don’t think we should leave anybody with the illusion that this is going to be confined to Asia-Europe. Since it’s a port congestion problem, it’s every trade in and out of Europe – it’s the transatlantic, it’s Europe-South America, it’s Europe-Africa.

“And we should also keep in mind that this is, to some degree, going to impact the US east coast as well – at least for those services that go around Africa. It’s not going to be as huge a problem as in Europe, but it will create issues there as well,” he said.