Geopolitical crises do not all have the same impact on trade routes and chokepoints – the transit corridors for maritime traffic. Whilst the Red Sea crisis has slowed down sailing times globally, the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz has, instead, triggered a far more unpredictable, localized domino effect, turning a maritime problem into a logistics nightmare on land.
In its latest report, Sea Intelligence points out that in March, the reliability of big carriers (in terms of vessel arrival punctuality) improved by 3.9% compared with pre-pandemic levels.
However, this is merely an apparent improvement, basically due to the mass exodus of major shipping lines, which have decided to abandon Middle Eastern ports entirely. This was not the case with the Red Sea crisis, which had the immediate effect of increasing sailing times due to ships being diverted around the Cape of Good Hope.
Although more localized, the crisis in the Strait of Hormuz has nevertheless triggered a serious logistics crisis on land. Carriers have in fact been forced to abruptly unload cargo destined for the Middle East at the nearest key hubs outside the blockade, such as the west coast of India and Colombo in Sri Lanka.
The enormous volume of goods stockpiled at these hubs quickly saturated the terminals, leading to reliability issues with timetables on unrelated commercial routes that used the same transhipment hubs as part of their service routes.
In short, the lesson from Sea-Intelligence is clear: a local maritime blockade may seem manageable on paper, but, in reality, it has created bottlenecks that are now affecting even trade routes completely unrelated to the original crisis.
Translation by Giles Foster
