Suez Canal traffic data has revealed that 322 ships across various industries transited the canal between 30 October and the 5 November, 2015, with a total load of more than 18 million tonnes, representing a decline of 5.3%, according to Daily News Egypt.
The total number of vessels that crossed the canal since the beginning of 2015 to November 5 amounts to more than 14,900 vessels.
About 46 ships per day transited the canal on average during the past week with an average load of 2.6m tonnes per day, in comparison to 49 ships the week before, with an average load of more than 2.6 million tonnes.
In the container shipping industry, experts have cited a decrease in sailings along Asia-Europe as a key determinant of the decrease in the number of ships.
Andy Lane of CTI Consultancy said: “What I expect to see and find for containers is that year-on-year the quantity of transits to have decreased, as with the formation and launch of O3 and 2M Alliances in January, there are overall fewer weekly services between Asia and Europe (both North and Med).
“There should be little change Europe-Middle East or Asia-USEC. As the year has progressed, then we have also witnessed contracting container (TEU) volumes, especially Asia-North Europe and this will have increased the quantity of blanked sailings and therefore reduced the quantity of Suez transits by container ships.”
Before the inauguration of the New Suez Canal in July, 2015, the average daily number of transiting vessels totalled 47 vessels, with an average load of more than 2.7 million tonnes per day.
Cargo load is the main measure of shipping traffic in the Suez Canal.
