• Carrier network adjustments are happening at the service level
• The container market is becoming increasingly fragmented by trade corridor, with freight rates, cargo demand and available capacity moving in different directions across major routes.
• Sogese’s base case points to gradual rebalancing, not a sharp rate correction

Asia-Europe container freight rates are falling as port congestion in Asia pushes carriers back toward the Suez Canal, according to Sogese’s September Europe Container Market Update. Drewry’s 3 September World Container Index  (WCI) put the Shanghai-Genoa rate at $4,368 per 40ft container, down 10% week on week, while Shanghai-Rotterdam fell 5% to $4,092. Blank sailings on the Asia-Europe trade are set to drop from four to one next week, an early sign of capacity returning to the market.

According to the September issue of the monthly report titled ‘Europe Container Market Update’ published by Sogese today, the container market is fragmenting by trade corridor, and carriers are reallocating capacity accordingly.

“The container market is becoming increasingly fragmented by trade corridor, with freight rates, cargo demand and available capacity moving in different directions across major routes. Asia-Europe rates have started to soften from their mid-year highs while transpacific markets remain firmer, prompting carriers to adjust individual services and vessel deployments rather than manage capacity uniformly across their networks.” shared Andrea Monti, CEO of Sogese S.r.l, Italy’s leading container logistics company.

“The selective return of services through the Suez Canal adds another variable: shorter voyages can increase effective capacity on Asia-Europe routes even without new ships entering the market. For shippers, this means that global fleet capacity is becoming a less reliable guide to the capacity available on a specific trade lane or through a particular port.” shared Monti.

“The container market is becoming less global in the way it behaves. Cargo demand, freight rates and available capacity are increasingly moving in different directions across trade corridors, which means that the next phase of the market will be defined less by global supply and demand and more by where that capacity and cargo are actually being deployed.” added Monti.

The report informs that the divergence between major trade corridors is beginning to show up directly in carrier network decisions. Rather than making broad capacity changes across their global networks, carriers are adjusting individual services, port rotations and vessel deployments in response to where cargo demand is holding up and where freight markets are beginning to soften.

Recent service changes illustrate how carriers are reallocating capacity service by service rather than across their networks as a whole. Ocean Alliance has confirmed revisions to its CPNW and MTE transpacific services, dropping Qingdao, Ningbo and Kwangyang from CPNW in favour of Kaohsiung and Yantian, while MTE drops Haiphong and adds Port Klang. Maersk’s seasonal TPX service, introduced in May to support peak-season demand between Vietnam, South Korea and the US West Coast, concludes as scheduled at the end of the third quarter. COSCO and OOCL have expanded their Red Sea presence on two fronts, launching a direct China-Jeddah service connecting Shanghai, Ningbo and Nansha with Saudi Arabia’s principal Red Sea gateway, alongside a separate seven-vessel Asia-Red Sea service linking Northeast Asia with Jeddah via Singapore and the Suez Canal. Taken together, the changes point to a network being recalibrated route by route, rather than expanded or contracted uniformly.

For European shippers, the result is a less predictable service environment. A service may remain commercially viable while its port rotation, sailing frequency or transshipment arrangement changes around it. As carriers become more selective about where they deploy vessels, schedule structures could therefore become less predictable even if overall capacity remains available.

Congestion in Asia is now the real force pulling capacity back through Suez

Asian port congestion has reached 4.3 million TEU, according to Linerlytica data, higher than the 4.0 million TEU stranded at the peak of the pandemic. Cape of Good Hope diversions are absorbing between 5% and 7% of global container capacity, roughly 1.7 to 2.4 million TEU. MSC, Maersk and Hapag-Lloyd have all announced partial returns to Suez in recent weeks.

“Congestion has become the more urgent variable,” said Andrea Monti, CEO and Managing Director of Sogese. “Carriers were waiting for the security picture to stabilise before committing capacity back through Suez. What has changed is that the cost of waiting has gone up faster than the risk of moving.”

Italy’s national numbers reveal deeper strain than regional port data shows

In the Western Ligurian port system covering Genoa, Savona and Vado Ligure, total container volumes fell 2.7% year on year in the first half of 2026 to around 1.45 million TEU, with gateway traffic up 1.6% and transshipment down 21.3%. Fedespedi’s first-quarter data shows a steeper national decline of 4.6%, with Trieste down 23.6%, Savona down 14.1% and Genoa down 4.9%, even as Italian exports grew 1.3% over the same period.

“Our own port data and the national picture are both accurate, and they are telling two different parts of the same story,” Monti said. “The regional numbers show resilience in gateway cargo. The national numbers show how much of Italy’s position in Mediterranean routing is being decided somewhere else.”

Gioia Tauro’s record year still leaves Italy far behind Tanger Med’s scale

Gioia Tauro handled a record 4.5 million TEU in 2025, up 14% on the previous year, and remains Italy’s dominant transshipment hub. Tanger Med handled 11.1 million TEU in the same year, up 8.4%, according to its port authority.

“A record year at Gioia Tauro is genuinely good news, and it should be read alongside the fact that its nearest comparable competitor is now more than twice its size,” Monti said. “That is not a monthly rotation question. It is a question about where Mediterranean transshipment investment is going over the next several years.”

Outlook

Sogese’s base case for the coming months is a gradual, congestion-driven return to Suez that releases effective capacity into the Asia-Europe market faster than carriers can absorb it through blank sailings alone. Italian transshipment volumes are likely to remain under pressure as long as Mediterranean routing decisions continue to favour ports with greater scale. Here are some key outlook estimations for the coming quarter from the report:

• Freight rates soften progressively but remain above pre-crisis levels
• Suez services expand selectively without a full network-wide return
• Asia-Europe capacity increases gradually as vessel productivity improves
• Equipment availability improves across parts of Europe
• Carrier network adjustments remain more tactical than structural
• European shippers gain some improvement in transit options, but planning remains fluid

Under this scenario, the market moves towards greater balance without a sharp rate correction. The main change for European cargo owners would be improving capacity availability instead of a rapid return to pre-crisis freight economics.

About Sogese’s Europe Container Market Update: Sogese’s monthly Europe Container Market Update tracks freight rates, capacity, carrier networks, routing and container flows across the European market, with a focus on developments affecting shippers and logistics planning.

The full September 2026 Europe Container Market Update, including complete data, methodology and scenario outlook, is available to download:

Sogese_Sep2026_Container_Market_Update.pptx