Freight News, Sea


Hapag-Lloyd chief rules out early return to Red Sea

[ April 3, 2025   //   ]

Hopes of an immediate return of shipping to the Red Sea have receded, Hapag-Lloyd chief executive Rolf Habben Jansen told an online conference on 3 April. He said that while hopes had been running high of a diversion from the long Cape of Good Hope route as recently as two months ago, it now appeared that stabilising the security situation would take significantly linger and he expected the Cape route to be used until the end of the year.

The US has been attacking Houthi rebel sites in Yemen in the past few days which have been used for the past year to attack shipping passing through the Red Sea.

While President Trump has claimed on social media that “their capabilities that threaten shipping and the region are rapidly being destroyed”, vessel operators are clearly not yet satisfied that the attacks have been reduced to the point where it is safe to resume operations.

In any case, Habben told the online conference, operators would want to be certain that any improvement to security was permanent before going back to the Red Sea. “Going back in and then coming out again would create chaos,” he said.

Asked whether a resumption of the Red Sea route, if and when it comes about would lead to a glut in capacity and reduce rates, the Hapag-Lloyd chief said that this could be managed by increasing scrapping and dry-docking of vessels, both of which have been deferred by operators in order to cope with the Red Sea situation. Shipping operators would also return to more economical ‘slow steaming’, he predicted.

Any return to the Red Sea would also need to be managed carefully to prevent vessels overtaking each other and creating congestion in ports.

Meanwhile, introduction of the new Gemini cooperative service between Hapag-Lloyd and Maersk was going well, said Habben. Some 285 of 340 ships had now been phased in and the new grouping was achieving up to 90% schedule reliability, he claimed. Other operators were currently managing only 25-30% at present, although this could partly be due to them phasing in their own new alliances and schedules, he conceded.

US trade tariffs could have some impact on global shipping in future, along with possible port ‘taxes’, Habben added. Depending on how such charges were levied, one possibility might be for ship operators to make few US port calls and concentrate traffic on a smaller number of key hub ports.

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