Asia-MED minimum transit time increases by 39%

The Red Sea crisis has forced shipping lines to sail around the Cape of Good Hope, increasing sailing distances and increasing transit times.

According to Sea-Intelligence, from the two sub-regions of Asia (North & South East Asia) and the three sub-regions of the Mediterranean (East, West, & Central MED), the average minimum transit time in the three months since the crisis (January-March 2024) increased by 39%.

This is compared to a six-month baseline (July-December 2023), counted across the four most connected port pairs across each region pair.

Asia-North Europe fared better in that respect, as the increase was lower at 15%. In a nutshell, the most competitive transit time increased on average by 39% on Asia-MED and by 15% on Asia-NEUR.

The figure below shows this broken down into sub-region combinations. The four most impacted subregion-pairs connect to East and Central Mediterranean, which makes sense because those connections had the longest detour.

The average minimum transit time increased by 61%-63% to the East Mediterranean and by 39%-40% to the Central Mediterranean.

For North Europe, connections to the Baltics had the smallest impact on transit times from the Red Sea crisis, with the average minimum transit time increasing by 7%-11%.