Tonnage is returning to Suez faster than ships

CMA CGM has sent 199 vessels through the Suez Canal since the start of 2026, carrying 25.2 million tonnes of Suez Canal net tonnage. In the whole of 2025 it sent 212 vessels carrying 18.8 million tonnes. The figures were reported by The Middle East Observer on 23 August 2026, after a meeting on 18 August between Suez Canal Authority chairman Osama Rabie and Christine Cabau, the carrier's executive vice-president for assets and operations.

Eight months of 2026 therefore carried about a third more tonnage than twelve months of 2025, on slightly fewer transits. The average net tonnage per transit rose from roughly 89,000 to roughly 127,000. The canal is not seeing more ships from this carrier; it is seeing bigger ones.

Lloyd's List Intelligence recorded close to 1,090 transits through the canal in the four weeks to 16 August 2026, about 88.6 million deadweight tonnes, against 1,070 in the preceding four weeks. Traffic remained 41% below pre-crisis levels. In the same briefing, MSC was reported to have taken seven vessels across the Bab el-Mandeb in a fortnight, and Maersk to have returned more than 30% of the Asia to Europe volume it had been routing around the Cape of Good Hope.

Read together with the tonnage figures, the pattern is that capacity is returning on the large Asia to Europe strings before it returns anywhere else. A recovery that arrives as bigger ships on mainline rotations is not a recovery that every service shares.

If your cargo moves on a mainline Asia to Europe service operated by one of the carriers restoring Suez rotations, the chance that your sailing routes through the canal is improving. If it moves on a feeder, a regional string or a smaller operator, the figures above describe someone else's ships.

The question worth asking your carrier is narrow and answerable: what is the rotation of the specific sailing I am booked on, and has it been reinstated through Suez or is it still routing via the Cape. A trade-lane trend will not answer that, and neither will a schedule printed before the rotation changed.

The same Lloyd's List Intelligence briefing that recorded the rising transit count also reported a cargo vessel declared a constructive total loss after an attack, and cited the Joint Maritime Information Center to the effect that the risk to commercial shipping remains substantial. It further noted that Somali pirates had seized two vessels in four days.

Carriers returning to the canal are making a commercial judgement about a route that is still assessed as carrying risk. That judgement belongs to them and can change. It is not a basis on which a shipper should promise a consignee a date.

The carrier tonnage and vessel counts, the 18 August meeting and the statement of intent are from The Middle East Observer, 23 August 2026. The canal-wide transit count, the deadweight figure, the 41% comparison, the MSC and Maersk detail and the security assessment are from Lloyd's List Intelligence, Red Sea Brief, 20 August 2026.

The arithmetic comparing tonnage per transit is ours, performed on the published figures and shown so it can be checked. MIDTRANS has no vessel-tracking capability of its own and does not present third-party market data as proprietary. Where our own view is offered above it is marked as an operational read, not a measurement.