For most of shipping history, the Asia–Europe question was settled: you went through the Suez Canal. Since the Red Sea disruptions began, that stopped being automatic, and the alternative — around the Cape of Good Hope — adds roughly 10 to 15 days to a voyage. This article is for companies importing from China into Europe and neighbouring markets, and covers what the routing situation looks like as of mid-2026 and, more usefully, how to plan when the answer keeps changing.
Where things stand
Two years of diversions produced a pattern that has repeated more than once: carriers announce a return to Red Sea transits, run trial passages, and then suspend those plans when the security situation deteriorates again. As a result, the majority of Asia–Europe capacity has continued to route via the Cape of Good Hope, and Suez transits in early 2026 remained roughly 60% below pre-disruption levels — a slow and uneven return of confidence rather than a reopening.
Treat any specific statement about routing, including this one, as perishable. The right operating assumption is not "it is fixed" or "it is broken", but that the routing on your particular service can change between booking and sailing, and your planning has to tolerate that.
What the longer route actually does
- Transit time. Ten to fifteen extra days each way on Asia–Europe and Asia–Mediterranean lanes. Mediterranean ports lose more than North European ones, because Suez saved them the most.
- Capacity. Longer voyages absorb ships. The same fleet delivers fewer round trips per year, which tightens supply even when nobody has scrapped a vessel — one reason rates stayed elevated far longer than the demand picture alone explained.
- Schedule reliability. Longer strings drift more. A published transit time means less than it used to, which matters most for anything tied to a fixed selling season.
- Cost. More fuel, more days, plus war risk and related surcharges where Red Sea routing is used. These appear as separate lines, as set out in what makes up a container rate.
- Equipment. Containers spend longer in transit and return to Asia later, which periodically shows up as equipment shortages at origin.
What it means for your lead times
The practical consequence is that a lead time quoted from historical experience is now wrong in one direction only — short. Rebuild the calculation:
- Take the current published transit for your actual service, not the lane average
- Add buffer for schedule slippage rather than assuming the published figure
- Re-run the arithmetic backwards from your selling date, as in production lead times in China
- Check whether the window crosses a Chinese holiday, which compounds the delay — see the Chinese New Year 2027 calendar
For goods where the extra fortnight breaks the business case, the alternatives are worth re-pricing rather than assuming: rail from China, which has its own transit and capacity profile, covered in rail versus sea freight from China; air for the high-value fraction, per sea versus air freight; or splitting a shipment so the urgent portion flies and the rest sails.
Routing-specific things to ask your forwarder
- Which routing is my service actually using, and has that changed since the rate was quoted?
- What is the current published transit, port to port, and what has actual performance been on recent sailings?
- Which surcharges apply to which routing, and what happens to my rate if the service switches mid-contract?
- What is the transhipment picture? Longer strings often add a transhipment, and each one is a place where a container can miss a connection.
- Is my cargo insured for the routing actually used? Policy exclusions and war risk terms vary by area transited — the mechanics are in cargo insurance for China imports.
That last question is the one most often skipped, and it is the one with an uncapped downside.
Planning that survives either outcome
The trap is building a supply chain that only works if routing normalises. Better to design for the longer transit and treat any improvement as upside:
- Order earlier and hold slightly more stock on the water — the cost of capital on extra inventory is usually smaller than the cost of a stockout in a fixed season
- Prefer schedule reliability over the cheapest rate for season-critical goods
- Keep the option of a second routing priced, so switching is a decision rather than a scramble
- Watch the market indices for the capacity effects of routing changes rather than reading news headlines — see freight rate indices
- Do not compress the factory schedule to recover shipping time. A rushed batch is a defective batch, and quality problems cost more than the fortnight they were meant to save
The Red Sea situation stopped being a news story and became a planning parameter. The importers who handled it best were not the ones who predicted the reopening correctly — they were the ones whose lead times did not depend on the prediction.
Planning shipments around live routing
We book against the routing actually in use rather than the historical one, keep alternatives priced for season-critical cargo, check insurance terms against the areas transited, and rebuild the backward schedule when a service changes. Seven years and 3,500+ deliveries — real projects are in our case studies.
See sea freight, logistics from China or cargo insurance.
