The cost of shipping by sea is rarely dependent on transport demand. It depends on how unstable the world is at that moment.
A war in a distant region, a channel becoming impassable, a ceasefire breaking down: these are events that seem to have nothing to do with your business, but within a few days they turn into a higher figure on the transport quote. And in recent years, this has happened with an unprecedented frequency.
It is not an isolated incident: a chain that starts from Covid
To understand today's situation, we need to go back to 2020. With the pandemic, for the first time in decades, global markets experienced profound uncertainty regarding supplies: services being cancelled, ships being unavailable, limited cargo space. During that period, the cost of shipping a container exceeded $10,000, compared to around $1,500 before the pandemic. It took years to return to a relative normality.
But that normality did not last long. First came the drought in the Panama Canal, which in 2023 forced authorities to reduce daily transits from the usual 36 down to 24, and then to 18 at the beginning of 2024: the most severe operational disruption in the canal's history. Then geopolitical tensions first affected the Suez Canal, with the Red Sea crisis, and now the Strait of Hormuz.
The message for planners is clear: we are not going through a single temporary crisis, but a continuous sequence of shocks that follow one another without giving the market time to stabilise. This is also why making medium- and long-term forecasts has become so difficult.
Because a problem on the other side of the planet ends up on your balance sheet
The mechanism is simple. When a route becomes dangerous, ships are forced to divert and take longer paths. With the crisis in the Red Sea, thousands of ships stopped passing through the Suez Canal and began to sail around Africa, adding 10 to 14 days to each journey between Asia and Europe. According to the United Nations, in 2024 ships travelled 17% more kilometres for the same amount of cargo.
The point is this: the same fleet, forced to take longer journeys, is able to move less cargo in the same time. Available capacity decreases even without a single ship being taken out of the market. And when available space decreases, the price goes up.
The numbers confirm it. When the difficulties in the Red Sea were compounded by military tensions in the Gulf, within a few weeks the cost of a container from Asia to the United States more than doubled. At the peak of the crisis, shipping a single container cost five times more than it did a few months earlier.
The paradox that confuses the numbers
There is a counterintuitive aspect that surprises those who only look at price trends.
Today, on paper, there are too many ships. So many are being built that between 2023 and 2027 global capacity will grow by about a third, much faster than the cargo to be transported. Logic would suggest: falling prices.
And instead, with every new tension, prices start to rise again. Only in June 2026 did the average cost of a container increase by 23% initially, and then again, surpassing 4,000 dollars within a few weeks.
The lesson for decision-makers is not "transport is expensive" or "it's cheap". It's something else: the real problem is not the price, it's its unpredictability. In a market with too many ships but no certainty, the risk is not paying a lot, it's not knowing how much you will pay in six weeks, just as you are already signing quotes for your clients.
The three profiles of companies facing instability
In the face of this seesaw, companies position themselves on three levels. We call it the Readiness Scale: it immediately shows who suffers the shock and who manages it.
First level: those who suffer. One way of shipping, everything purchased at the last moment, no backup plan. The company discovers how much it costs only when the invoice arrives, and absorbs every increase in full. This is the most common attitude and, in the long run, the most expensive.
Second level: those who hedge. They combine long-term contracts and short-term purchases, keep some extra stock, often decided more by instinct than calculation, and follow market trends. The shock is felt, but it weighs less.
Third level: those who decide in advance. They have stopped considering "how I ship" as a given choice. They divide the goods by priority and value and already know in advance what goes by sea and what, if a route is blocked, goes by air without having to improvise. The rule was defined when there was calm, not in an emergency.
Sea or air: not a choice, but a setup decided in advance
This is where the real strategic question comes in. The plane is not meant to replace the ship: it costs too much to do so. It is meant to protect the part of the goods that cannot afford to wait weeks.
This is not theory. During the Red Sea crisis, several large companies, including the automotive group Stellantis, shifted a portion of their goods to air freight to avoid extending delivery times by 20-25%. Those who had already anticipated this possibility activated it with clarity; others sought it at the last minute, paying more for it.
| By sea | By air |
Cost | Low | High |
Times | Weeks | Days |
How much it is affected by crises | A lot | Less, and in a different way |
Ideal for | Large volumes, goods that can wait | Valuable, urgent, critical goods |
What is it for | It is the centre of the flows | It is the coverage against risks |
The other lever: calculated stock, not improvised
Changing mode is not the only answer. There is a second, often less costly one: keeping in stock what is needed to cover delays.
The difference lies entirely in how. Almost all companies have stock; few have sized it for a crisis scenario. If the reorder level is set for 30-day transits and the route adds 14, the safety stock no longer protects: it is an old number. Recalculating it means knowing which codes would really stop a delivery, which routes are exposed, and how many days of delay one is willing to absorb.
The comparison must be made in full: stock costs storage and tied-up capital, but it is a known and programmable cost; an emergency air shipment costs much more, but only when needed. In practice, the two levers combine: stock absorbs predictable delays, while the plane covers exceptions. Those who only have stock find themselves with a full and slow warehouse; those who only have the plane pay full price for every unforeseen event.
The point is not to take sides for one mode. It is to decide in advance, with a clear head, which part of the goods changes course when the sea gets rough.
If you looked at your company through the eyes of an external consultant, how many of your shipments today travel in only one way simply because "that's how it's always been done"?
The real question is not how much it costs to prepare before the next crisis. It is how much it will cost you to find out on the day when the route closes, with the goods stuck and a customer on the phone.