Sea-Intelligence analysed the impact of the Red Sea crisis on container ship calls to the region's deep-sea ports.
Figure 1 shows the number of deep-sea port calls in the major regions closest to the Suez Canal – East Mediterranean (East MED), Gulf of Aden, and the Red Sea itself. While the total number of monthly deep-sea port calls in East MED were already trending downwards pre-crisis, the M/M drop in January 2024 was quite significant at -22%. Compared to the pre-crisis average, the drop in 2024 has been -33%. A similar -33% drop in the average monthly calls was also seen for the Gulf of Aden, from roughly 100 monthly calls to 60-70 in 2024.
Like East MED, port calls in the region have been recovering, albeit very slowly. The Red Sea saw the most severe impact of the crisis, with a -85% drop in the average number of deep-sea port calls in 2024. The figure dropped from over 200 calls per month, to under 40 in January-June 2024. The figure rose to 60 calls in July 2024, which was a double that of the previous months. However, it remains to be seen if this will continue, or if this is a temporary uptick.
In the Red Sea, the most impacted ports were Jeddah and King Abdullah Port. Carriers stopped calling King Abdullah Port on their deep-sea services from January 2024 onwards, while Jeddah saw the sharpest decline of -74% M/M from December 2023 to January 2024. Even after a slight improvement in July 2024, the port is averaging just 37 calls per month compared to the pre-crisis average of 135 monthly calls. In East MED, Piraeus and Port Said were the most impacted, while in the Gulf of Aden, Salalah saw deep-sea port calls drop by nearly -50% in January-February 2024.
In terms of schedule reliability, Red Sea and East Mediterranean are back to the per-crisis levels, while the Gulf of Aden is still lagging. Additionally, an improvement was recorded across all three regions in the average delay of late vessel arrivals, which, after a very sharp increase to 10-14 days in January 2024, dropped back down to pre-crisis levels of 4-5 days.
