Maersk Line has announced it will switch its Asia-US route from the Panama Canal to go via the Suez Canal instead, thus allowing it to use larger and more fuel-efficient ships.
From April this year, the world’s biggest container shipping company will send a vessel with a capacity of 9,000 20-foot equivalent units (TEUs) through the Suez rather than direct two ships with half that capacity through the Panama Canal.
“The economics are much, much better via the Suez Canal simply because you have half the number of ships,” said Maersk’s chief executive officer Soeren Skou. “One of the reasons for why this is happening now is that the cost for passing through the Panama Canal has gone up. At the end of the day, it comes down to cost.”
Skou stated that fees for ships travelling through the Panama Canal have trebled over the past five years, rising from US$150,000 to US$450,000 per passage for a single 4,500 TEU vessel.
Bonnie Chan, an analyst at Macquarie Group, believes that other container lines may follow suit.
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