Two things are happening to Asia Europe container capacity at once. Typhoons have parked roughly 2.4 million TEU of vessel capacity behind schedule across North Asia, and carriers are moving services back through the Suez Canal after almost 3 years around the Cape. September bookings sit on top of both.
I have been tracking berth queues at Shanghai and Ningbo since the first closure notices went out on 7 August, and the pattern is the one every weather event in this region produces: the closure is short, the recovery is not. What follows is the state of the backlog as of 31 August 2026, the parallel reopening of the Red Sea, and how I would sequence bookings for the next 6 weeks.
What the typhoons actually closed
Typhoon Dolphin suspended terminal operations at Shanghai and Ningbo on 7 and 8 August, with full closures running into 9 August and safety inspections on 10 August before berths reopened. Ningbo resumed on the Monday afternoon, Shanghai early on the Tuesday. Counted end to end, that is roughly 3 days of lost throughput at 2 of the 4 busiest container ports on earth.
| Port | Berth waiting after Dolphin | Yard condition |
|---|---|---|
| Shanghai | 5 to 8 days | High density, trucking queues at the gates |
| Ningbo | 3 to 5 days | Handling resumed progressively from 10 August |
| Yantian | 3 to 4 days | Yard utilisation above 90 percent |
The number that matters is not the closure length but the 2.4 million TEU of capacity left waiting across North Asia in the week that followed. For scale, that is more box capacity than the entire fleet of every carrier outside the top 5. Kuehne Nagel and several forwarders put clearance at several weeks rather than several days, and mid to late August is when terminals expected to work through it.
Then a second system arrived, and it behaved better than the first. Typhoon Saudel crossed the East China Sea with winds reported near 50 metres per second and made a double landfall in Zhejiang on 28 August, near Taizhou at 08:05 and again near Wenzhou at 09:10, weakening to a severe tropical storm as it came ashore. Shanghai and Ningbo had raised their emergency response to the top level beforehand, then stepped it back down the same day. Waigaoqiao restarted at 12:00, Yangshan at 14:00 and the Ningbo terminals at 15:00 on 28 August.
That is roughly 1 lost day against the 3 that Dolphin took, and the gap between those 2 numbers matters more than the storm count. A second closure inside a single recovery cycle is what turns a weather event into a rate event, because carriers respond with blank sailings and port omissions rather than extra calls. Saudel was short enough that the blanking response stayed limited, which leaves the Dolphin queue as the dominant problem rather than a compounding one.
Why the backlog outlives the storm
A container terminal has no spare shift to give back. When a berth window is missed, the ship does not simply take the next one: it queues behind vessels whose windows were already booked, and every hour of queue pushes the whole rotation. That is why a 3 day closure produces a 5 to 8 day wait a week later at Shanghai and why the effect shows up 4 weeks afterwards in European arrivals.
The knock on effects follow a predictable order in my experience of these events. Equipment goes first, because empties sit on ships instead of returning to depots. Then schedule reliability, as carriers omit calls to claw back time. Then landside costs, as demurrage and detention clocks run against cargo that nobody can collect. Anyone who lived through the Jeddah congestion of early 2026 will recognise the sequence.
Demand is not helping the arithmetic on the other side of the Pacific either. United States container imports for August were forecast to fall 4.2 percent year on year as the tariff driven pull forward earlier in 2026 unwound, which means the delayed capacity arrives into a market that ordered less, not more.
The Red Sea is reopening in the same weeks
While Asian terminals were digging out, the routing map changed. Traffic through the southern Red Sea reached roughly 1,090 transits, or 88.6 million deadweight tonnes, over the 4 weeks to 20 August. That is the highest figure since the period from 8 January to 4 February 2024, though volume remains about 41 percent below pre crisis levels.
| Carrier | Recent Red Sea position |
|---|---|
| CMA CGM | 15 Bab el Mandeb transits in a single week, the most of any carrier |
| Maersk | 11 transits in the same week, over 30 percent of Asia Europe volume back via Suez |
| MSC | 7 crossings in 2 weeks, then 4 east west services restored from 24 August |
| Hapag-Lloyd | Partial return, slower than the other 3 |
MSC issued a customer advisory on 24 August restoring Suez routings on the Jade and Tiger services between Asia and the Mediterranean, Albatros between Asia and North Europe, and Himalaya between India and the Mediterranean. Some trade press counted 5 services rather than 4, which usually reflects whether a Mediterranean feeder leg is counted separately. Either way MSC became the fourth of the big carriers to move, after CMA CGM, Maersk and Hapag-Lloyd.
The economics behind the switch are blunt. Cape routing added 10 to 14 days per rotation and up to 1 million dollars of extra fuel per voyage. Returning 4 services to Suez lets MSC run each rotation with 2 fewer ships, releasing about 8 vessels into a market where charter tonnage is still tight. That released capacity is the mechanism by which a security decision in the Red Sea becomes a rate decision in Rotterdam.
Hormuz is moving the other way
It would be convenient to read the Red Sea recovery as a general easing of chokepoint risk. The Gulf says otherwise. The Strait of Hormuz remains militarily closed, with a United States naval blockade reimposed in early August after renewed attacks on commercial vessels. Preliminary counts showed 73 transits between 10 and 16 August, down from 91 the previous week, and IMF PortWatch logged just 3 crossings on 23 August against a pre crisis baseline near 85 per day.
For a shipper the practical consequence is that 2 of the 3 great east west chokepoints now behave in opposite directions, and insurance markets price them separately. Gulf origin cargo still needs the workarounds set out in our Hormuz bypass guide, while Asia Europe cargo can start planning on Suez transit times again, cautiously.
How I would sequence the next 6 weeks
- Assume 2 weeks of schedule noise from Asia, not 2 days. The Dolphin backlog plus the 28 August Saudel closure means early September sailings from Shanghai, Ningbo and Yantian still carry real slippage risk, even though Saudel itself cost about 1 day of throughput.
- Book Suez services for transit time, not for price. The 10 to 14 day saving is the whole point. Rates on Asia to North Europe were already easing, sitting near 4,700 dollars per FEU in mid August after peaking above 5,000 in July.
- Check the routing on every booking confirmation. Carriers are switching services individually rather than wholesale, so 2 sailings on the same string can take different routes in the same month.
- Keep a Cape contingency for October. The return is real but reversible, and it has already been reversed twice since 2024.
- Watch equipment, not just vessels. Empty repositioning out of North Asia lags berth recovery by roughly 2 weeks in every event I have followed.
- Split high value and time critical volume across 2 gateways. Shanghai plus a South China port beats concentrating everything where the yard is already above 90 percent.
The wider question is whether this is normalisation or a pause. Several analysts now expect container traffic through the Red Sea to be broadly normal by the end of 2026, which would release a large block of effective global capacity as ships stop steaming the long way round. That would be the largest single supply side change since 2024, and it lands in a market that ordered a record volume of new tonnage. If both happen together, the rate direction is not hard to guess.
Common questions
How long will the Chinese port backlog take to clear? Terminals worked through the Dolphin queue across mid to late August, with several weeks the working assumption. Saudel landed on 28 August and cost roughly 1 further day, because Shanghai and Ningbo terminals restarted the same afternoon.
Is the Suez Canal safe again? Traffic is at its highest since early 2024 but still around 41 percent below pre crisis levels, and CMA CGM, Maersk, MSC and Hapag-Lloyd have returned at different speeds. Treat it as a service by service decision rather than a reopened corridor. Our Suez routing guide sets out the decision framework.
How much time does Suez save against the Cape? 10 to 14 days per rotation on Asia Europe, plus up to 1 million dollars in fuel per voyage.
Does the Red Sea recovery affect the Gulf? No. Hormuz remains closed to most traffic, with 73 transits recorded in the week to 16 August against a normal baseline near 85 per day.
What happens to rates? More effective capacity from shorter routings, into softer United States import demand, points down rather than up, which is why August spot levels on Asia to North Europe were already below the July peak.
Sources: Kuehne Nagel and forwarder advisories on Typhoon Dolphin issued between 9 and 14 August 2026, Lloyd's List Intelligence Red Sea and Strait of Hormuz briefs dated 19 and 20 August 2026, MSC customer advisory of 24 August 2026 on Suez restoration, IMF PortWatch transit counts for 23 August 2026, forwarder and terminal advisories on the Typhoon Saudel landfall and restart of 28 August 2026, plus trade press reporting on United States container import forecasts for August 2026. Positions reflect information available on 31 August 2026.