It means transit times have stretched to 60 days on some routes. Shipping costs are under structural upward pressure. And planning ahead is no longer a virtue, but a necessity.
To understand how we got here, we have to go back to October 2023, when the war in Gaza broke out. A few weeks later, the Houthis—who have controlled northern Yemen since 2014, financed by Iran—began attacking merchant ships in the Red Sea. Any ship. Regardless of flag or cargo. Since then, they have carried out more than 190 attacks. The result was immediate: major shipping companies abandoned the Suez Canal route, which under normal circumstances handles around 12% of global maritime trade, and began to circumvent the Cape of Good Hope at the southern tip of Africa.
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