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ContainerSignal Daily: ONE joins Suez return as rates slide

By Toni Tan · · 15 min read

ONE has become the latest major carrier to resume Suez Canal transits, with the 8,110 TEU ONE Continuity scheduled to pass through the canal later this month. The move lands in a market where the return of services to the canal is adding effective capacity to Asia-Europe at the same time as carriers try to push rates up in the second half of October.

Linerlytica, cited by The Loadstar, says teu-mile demand growth has regressed for the first time since January, and that the Suez return is the biggest obstacle to reversing an Asia-Europe rate slide that has run for three months. Two other operational stories carry the day: empty container congestion at the Manila International Container Port, where truckers began a voluntary holiday, and the Panama Canal’s extension of its long-term slot programme to the Panamax locks.

Today’s Signals

Freight Rates

The Loadstar reports that Linerlytica attributes the first regression in teu-mile demand growth since January to three factors together: blanked sailings during China’s Golden Week, which began on 1 October; faster newbuild deliveries; and more vessels returning to the Suez Canal on Asia-Europe. The blanked sailings are concentrated on the Asia-US East Coast and Asia-Europe trades.

Carriers are answering with rate increases rather than capacity cuts alone. MSC has announced new Asia-North Europe FAK (freight all kinds) rates from 19 October of US$3,150 per TEU and US$4,500 per 40ft, one of several carriers making a concerted push from the end of October, according to The Loadstar. It notes that rates on that trade have fallen around 60% since July.

The Shanghai Shipping Exchange puts its SCFI composite at 3,662.30 for 30 September, down 24.32 points from 3,686.62 on 24 September, according to the exchange’s index page. The page publishes per-lane values through a script this host cannot read, so the lane figures are given as The Loadstar reports them: Asia-Europe at US$2,199 per TEU and US$3,378 per 40ft. Container freight rate indexes explained sets out how a composite reading sits above those individual lanes and why the distinction matters when the two move in different directions.

Carrier Updates

ONE will transit the Suez Canal with the 8,110 TEU ONE Continuity on its South-east Asia-North Europe service later this month, after the vessel leaves Laem Chabang in Thailand on 17 October, The Loadstar reports. ONE joins CMA CGM, Maersk, MSC, Hapag-Lloyd and COSCO with OOCL, which have already restored canal transits. Other Premier Alliance members have not followed and continue to cite security concerns.

Hapag-Lloyd’s US$4.2 billion acquisition of Zim Integrated Shipping Services has been pushed into a new review after Israel’s Government Companies Authority ended its assessment of the original structure, FreightWaves reports. The parties must submit a materially revised proposal through a fresh process. FreightWaves lists the changes as an additional shipping route linking Israel and Asia, a new fleet for a separate Israeli operator, and foreign ownership scrutiny that reports suggest could begin at 10% rather than 24%. The deal is priced at US$35 per Zim share, and FreightWaves says it would lift Hapag-Lloyd, ranked fifth by Alphaliner, from about 2.4 million to 3.1 million units of capacity, which is not enough to move it into the top four.

Wärtsilä will supply dual-fuel engines for 12 LNG dual-fuel container vessels that CMA CGM is building at China’s Jiangnan shipyard, LNG Prime reports. ship.energy states that the order covers 36 engines for vessels of 18,000 TEU. How that size sits in the fleet hierarchy, and what hull dimensions it implies, is covered in how container ships are sized.

Ports

Customs brokers and truckers at the Manila International Container Port escalated a dispute over empty container congestion on 6 October. PortCalls Asia reports that the Practicing Customs Brokers Association of the Philippines extended its digital protest and rest day into a second day, and that five trucking and logistics groups began a voluntary trucking holiday the same day. The brokers’ group claims about 85% of the port is occupied by empty containers and that almost 1,000 containers are awaiting acceptance at container yards. PortCalls states these figures come from the group’s own monitoring and that it could not verify them, so they are reported here as the group’s claims.

The group wants shipping lines to evacuate empties and provide adequate return slots, and it supports a provision in the Bureau of Customs’ draft joint administrative order that would penalise a line whose container yard allocation exceeds 30%. The bureau has acknowledged the congestion and limited depot capacity and appealed for calm and dialogue while it drafts the order.

In Germany, the ver.di trade union has accepted the employers’ latest offer for seaport workers, Container News reports, averting the immediate threat of indefinite strikes at Hamburg, Bremen, Bremerhaven, Emden, Brake and Wilhelmshaven. The accepted proposal is a 12-month collective agreement with a 3.4% increase in hourly wages retroactive to August 2026, holiday pay up by EUR 200, and a further EUR 416 for workers in high-turnover container operations. Approval from the employer side is still pending.

WorldCargo News reports that Durban Gateway Terminal is still facing severe vessel and landside delays following its August migration to the Navis N4 terminal operating system, with South Africa’s minister calling for action to clear the backlog. The publication’s summary does not quantify the delay, so no figure is given here.

Trade Routes

The Panama Canal Authority has opened a new phase of its Long-term Slot Allocation programme, running from 3 January to 3 April 2027 and reaching the Panamax locks for the first time, according to its announcement. The Neopanamax programme offers 36 packages covering 270 slots (165 northbound and 105 southbound), and the new Panamax pilot offers 51 packages covering 288 slots (147 northbound and 141 southbound). Each set is equivalent to three daily transits across the programme period.

Slots are allocated by sealed-bid competition, on 17 November for Neopanamax and 24 November for Panamax, with the same allocation mechanism, selection criteria and tie-breaking rules applied to both. Remaining transit capacity is expected to keep flowing through the regular reservation system and auction. The authority says the programme is designed for schedule predictability during the dry season, when water availability constrains operations, the same constraint that shaped its draft and transit increases in September. Container News carries the same detail.

Security incidents in and around the Strait of Hormuz continued on 5 October. gCaptain reports that UKMTO disclosed four attacks and one direct threat against commercial shipping in the Hormuz area on Monday, with three of the attacks having occurred over the previous two days, and that the Joint Maritime Information Center’s 4 October update documented four confirmed tanker attacks on 2 and 3 October. US Central Command said forces redirected the 130th commercial vessel on 5 October under a blockade that resumed on 14 July, disabled three vessels that refused to comply and destroyed 13 over 12 weeks.

The incidents reported are against tankers and gas carriers rather than container ships, so none of them changes container capacity directly. For container lines the exposure is contractual and financial rather than physical: war risk premium and insurance conditions attached to Gulf and Middle East routings, which carriers recover through surcharges on affected cargo.

Fleet & Capacity

Newbuild deliveries accelerated after the usual summer lull, with nearly 200,000 TEU of new capacity delivered in September and no vessels demolished, according to Linerlytica as reported by The Loadstar. That is capacity added to a network that is also recovering tonnage previously tied up on the longer Cape of Good Hope routing.

HD Hyundai says it has delivered the first container ship built without manual lashing, a 13,000 TEU vessel for a French owner, in a company announcement. The design extends the cell guides that hold containers below deck up above deck, and adds a portable bench built to the dimensions of a 40-foot container so standard port cranes can handle it, plus a twistlock system for containers stowed outside the guide area. HD Hyundai says the arrangement allows more than 10% additional cargo weight on deck compared with conventional vessels of the same type, and that September sea trials showed reduced vibration. The owner is not named in the announcement.

Charter rates strengthened in August, with New ConTex assessments higher month on month across all eight vessel categories the index covers, according to the September edition of DynaLiners Monthly as reported by Container News. The 1,700 TEU segment recorded the largest annual gain, at US$33,877 per day against US$26,760 in August 2025, an increase of 26.6%, while the 2,500 TEU assessment rose to US$37,227 per day, up 6.9% year on year. The Harpex averaged 2,371 points in August, up from 2,337 in July, and its latest reading in the report was 2,447, the 2026 high. Reported fixtures include Hapag-Lloyd extending the 15,400 TEU Atlanta Express for 84 months at US$49,000 per day and Maersk fixing the 4,300 TEU Ren Jian 10 for 24 months at US$44,500 per day.

DP World has signed a lease option agreement with the Port of Corpus Christi in Texas for a container terminal that could eventually handle about 1 million TEU a year, FreightWaves reports, citing the port authority’s chief strategy and sustainability officer speaking at the American Association of Port Authorities convention. Corpus Christi is not currently a container port. The project would be DP World’s first US container terminal development since it divested P&O’s US operations in 2006.

Regulation & Policy

The US Federal Maritime Commission has questioned COSCO over non-payment of reparations to an Oregon-based agricultural shipper, the Journal of Commerce reports. The agency says the carrier will be subject to fines of up to US$25,000 a day if it determines that the lack of payment is willful and knowing. Trade press has also reported the action with higher headline totals; the figure stated here is the one in the Journal of Commerce, which was reachable and read in full.

What It Means

For shippers, the near-term direction on Asia-Europe is down, and the Suez returns are the reason most often cited. A shorter rotation releases tonnage back into the same number of weekly sailings, so effective capacity rises without any carrier ordering a single ship. Carriers are trying to hold the line with FAK increases from mid to late October and with blank sailings, which remain the main lever for removing capacity quickly. Whether those increases hold depends on whether Chinese export volumes recover once Golden Week ends on 8 October, and on how much of the newbuild pipeline lands on these lanes. The mechanics of that lever are set out in what is a blank sailing.

The capacity arithmetic matters more than any single rate print. Nearly 200,000 TEU arrived in September with nothing scrapped, the charter market is strong enough that carriers are signing multi-year fixtures at high daily rates, and Suez routings are shortening voyages. All three push in the same direction on supply, while demand is entering its weakest seasonal window. This is the same tension between a tight physical network and softening prices that we examined in Asia-Europe rates fall even as the container network stays tight, and the October rate pushes are a test of which side gives first.

At the ports, the Manila dispute is a reminder that empty container return discipline is now a live operational risk rather than a back-office matter. Empty boxes occupying yard space delay import haulage and raise trucking costs, and the draft Philippine customs order would put a 30% yard allocation threshold on carriers with a penalty attached. Shippers routing through Manila should expect rollover risk while the protest runs, and should check carrier advisories rather than assume normal gate hours.

On the routes, the Panama Canal’s slot programme gives shippers and carriers a way to book dry-season certainty months ahead, at the cost of bidding for it, and the Panamax extension opens the option to a smaller class of vessel for the first time. Hormuz remains the opposite of certain. The attacks reported this week hit tankers and gas carriers, but container lines transiting the Gulf and Middle East trades still carry the insurance bill for operating in listed waters.

Sources

Background reading

The explainers behind today's stories, if you want the fundamentals first.

Asia-Europe rates fall even as the container network stays tight

Asia-Europe spot rates fell for a twelfth week while intra-Asia set another record and mid-size tonnage ran scarce. The two readings measure different layers.

Asia-Europe spot rates extend their fall as Transpacific gains stall

Drewry's World Container Index fell 1% to US$4,434 per 40ft in the week to 1 October, Asia-Europe's twelfth weekly decline, while Transpacific gains slowed.

What is a blank sailing? Container capacity and schedules

A blank sailing is a scheduled container voyage or port call that a carrier cancels. Why they happen, how they are announced, and what shippers can do.

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