Red Sea Crisis Likely to Create Sharp Capacity Drops in April 2024

The Red Sea crisis has been going on for a month now, and the current service networks are clearly in flux, with a lot of uncertainty especially on the services going from Asia to Europe.

Sea Intelligence has compared present changes with normal volatility, as well as with the market disruptions over the past few years.

The red circles are all marking Chinese New Year/Golden Week, where capacity declines are catered to demand shortfalls occurring because of these holidays, and as such, are seen as normal market behaviour.

The two phases of the pandemic are marked with green arrows – the first phase where it only impacted Chinese ports and the second when it spread globally.

The “Ever Given” event is also marked, and this is clearly seen to have the largest single impact. It should be noted, though, that part of this ended up overlapping with capacity changes related to Chinese New Year that year.

With the “Ever Given” as the only exception, the Red Sea crisis is the largest single event – even larger than the early pandemic impact.

It may be noted that the missiles being fired have ranges up to 2000 kms. This puts several ports in the region that may be support Operation Prosperity Guardian also within striking range.

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