Transpacific emerges as liner shipping’s golden trade
Splash 247 · Nov 4, 2026
The transpacific has become the most lucrative major container shipping trade in the world, with carriers generating five times more spot revenue per nautical mile on the Shanghai–Los Angeles route than on shipments to North Europe via the Cape of Good Hope. New analysis from Alphaliner shows that the extraordinary strength of the US trade …
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The corridor
Cape of Good Hope
Global chokepointSouthern AfricaNot a chokepoint but the relief valve: the standing alternative to Suez, and the route that absorbs Asia–Europe traffic whenever the Red Sea is judged unsafe. Its traffic level is the cleanest single read on how much the world trusts the Red Sea this month.
- Rising Cape traffic is the mirror image of falling Suez traffic; read together they show the diversion rate directly rather than by inference.
- The route needs more bunkers per voyage, which raises fuel demand at South African and West African bunkering ports.
- Southern-ocean weather routing adds variance as well as days, so schedule reliability degrades further than the extra distance alone implies.
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