Long Beach, California — The backlog of containers that would result from ocean carriers resuming Red Sea transits would take months to clear from Europe’s port hubs, Hanna Stelzel, the director of containers for the Port of Rotterdam, told the Journal of Commerce’s TPM25 conference this week.

Once the Red Sea is deemed safe enough for commercial shipping, vessels taking the shorter route would overtake those diverting around southern Africa, with severe congestion expected as a result.

Stelzel said the timeline for clearing the backlog of boxes at Rotterdam was based on the disruption caused when the Ever Given was freed after six days of blocking the Suez Canal in 2021.

“It will be very challenging, but what we learned from the Suez blockage was that by widening our anchorage area it gave us an advantage and we have put that into practice,” Stelzel said.

It is estimated that more than 1.9 million TEUs of capacity were delayed during the six-day Ever Given blockage in 2021. Carrier schedules were heavily disrupted for months at ports in North Europe and along the US East Coast.

But the diversions around Africa over the past 15 months as carriers avoid potential attacks in the Red Sea by Houthi militants operating in Yemen have absorbed about 10% of global container shipping capacity, and the impact of resuming Suez transits will be far greater.

In addition to expanding its anchorage area, Rotterdam has improved its sharing of data and collaboration across its customer supply chain to manage the expected congestion, Stelzel said.

‘Severe risk’ to vessels remains

But given the fragility of the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas and the potential for the Hamas-backing Houthis to resume attacks on shipping in the Red Sea, the port congestion that will emerge from a return to the Suez is unlikely to be this year’s problem.

Jack Kennedy, head of Middle East and North Africa country risk at S&P Global, parent company of the Journal of Commerce, said in his one-year outlook there remains a “severe risk” to vessels transiting the Red Sea.

“We expect the ceasefire process is likely to break down in the next 12 months and military operations will resume in Gaza,” was Kennedy’s bleak assessment given during a TPM25 session on the Red Sea situation.

Kennedy said the Houthis will use that as a justification for resuming their own rocket attacks on Israel, which he predicts will result in airstrikes from the US, thus triggering a resumption of attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea.

A more optimistic view of the resumption of Suez Canal transits was presented by Tom Behrens Sorensen, chairman of ECCO Global Shoe Production, who said Chinese- and Russian-flagged carriers were already transiting the Red Sea.

“Once the carriers in the first alliance return to Suez, all the rest will have to follow, and in my view, that will happen in the second half,” he told an Asia-Europe panel discussion at TPM25.

“Obviously, there are lot of caveats in this in terms of how the political situation evolves, but I’m cautiously optimistic that it will happen in the third or fourth quarter because the temptation [to resume Suez transits] is too big,” Behrens Sorensen added.

Greg Knowler, Senior Editor Europe | Mar 5, 2025, 1:33 PM EST