COSCO container ship makes first Suez Canal transit since Red Sea tensions

Egypt’s Suez Canal witnessed the first transit of the giant container ship OOCL PORTUGAL on Wednesday. The vessel, operated by COSCO SHIPPING Lines, marked the shipping line’s first southbound passage through the canal since tensions began in the Red Sea and Bab el-Mandeb.

The vessel, travelling from Belgium to China as part of the northbound convoy, is around 400 metres long and 61.3 metres wide, with a gross tonnage of 247,000 tons and capacity for up to 24,000 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs).

OOCL PORTUGAL operates on the NEU2 service, run by the OCEAN Alliance, which connects major ports along the trade route between the Far East and Northwestern Europe.

Total net tonnage of container ships transiting the canal rose to nearly 72.1 million tons during January-August 2026, up 54.2 per cent from around 46.7 million tons during the same period in 2025.

Canal traffic on Wednesday included 39 vessels with total net tonnage of 2.3 million tons.