COSCO Returns Southbound Through the Suez Canal as Container Ship Net Tonnage Runs 54.2 Percent Above Last Year
The mega container ship OOCL PORTUGAL transited the Suez Canal on Wednesday in the north convoy on a voyage from Belgium to China, and the Suez Canal Authority used the occasion to disclose that the net tonnage of container ships passing through the waterway reached approximately 72.1 million tons in the first eight months of 2026, against 46.7 million tons in the same period of 2025. The Authority puts the increase at 54.2 percent.
Admiral Ossama Rabiee, Chairman and Managing Director of the Authority, said the transit marks the first time COSCO SHIPPING Lines has passed through the Suez Canal southbound since the tensions in the Red Sea and Bab El-Mandab. The vessel is affiliated to COSCO SHIPPING Lines and operates on the NEU2 service run by Ocean Alliance, connecting the main ports on the route between the Far East and North-West Europe.
What the eight month figures actually say
| Net tonnage of container ships | Jan to Aug |
|---|---|
| 2026 | 72.1m tons |
| 2025 | 46.7m tons |
| Increase | 25.4m tons |
| Authority stated change | +54.2% |
Suez Canal Authority, release of 16 September 2026. The increase row is our subtraction of the Authority two published figures. These figures measure the net tonnage of the container ships themselves, not the weight of containerised cargo and not the number of containers carried.
Recomputing the percentage on those two published figures gives 54.4 percent rather than the 54.2 percent the Authority states, on our calculation. The gap is small and points to the Authority computing from unrounded internals rather than the rounded figures it printed. We report the Authority number as the official one and flag the difference rather than quietly substituting our own.
The monthly run rate is the more useful way to hold the recovery. Container ship net tonnage averaged 9.01 million tons a month across the first eight months of 2026 against 5.84 million tons a month in the same period of 2025, a difference of 3.18 million tons every month, on our calculation. Carried across a full year at the same pace, 2026 would land near 108.15 million tons against roughly 70.05 million tons on the 2025 pace, on our calculation. That is an annualisation of an eight month run rate rather than a forecast, and the last four months of 2025 are not in it.
The lines that came back, and the one that just did
Rabiee said the Canal has brought back numerous maritime services operated by major shipping lines on the Europe to Asia route, naming CMA CGM, Maersk, MSC, Hapag Lloyd and COSCO. Those five are the largest container operators on the East to West trades, so the list is less a sample than a near complete set of the carriers whose absence drove the tonnage decline in the first place.
COSCO is the newest of the five to return, and the Authority is specific that Wednesday transit is its first southbound passage since the disruption began. The Authority does not say that the NEU2 service has resumed in both directions on a fixed schedule, and one voyage would not establish that. Whether further NEU2 sailings route through Suez is the test that matters, because a service scheduled both ways is what turns into sustained tonnage.
The vessel itself is at the top end of what the Canal handles. The OOCL PORTUGAL is approximately 400 metres long with a beam of 61.3 metres, a gross tonnage of 247 thousand tons, and capacity for up to 24 thousand twenty foot equivalent units.
Same day traffic gives a sense of the ordinary run. The Authority reported 39 vessels transiting on Wednesday at a total net tonnage of 2.3 million tons, which averages about 59 thousand tons per vessel, on our calculation. That average mixes vessel classes and is an indication of the scale of a day rather than a measure of any one ship.
Why it matters: the Suez Canal is one of Egypt main sources of foreign currency, and canal receipts move with tonnage rather than with vessel counts, which is why the container ship figure is the one to watch. Net tonnage running 54.2 percent above last year is the clearest evidence yet that the carriers are scheduling through Suez again rather than testing it. The Authority own framing is careful here: it describes services being brought back, not traffic being restored, and the 2025 base it is measuring against was itself heavily depressed. A 54.2 percent gain on a weak base is recovery, not growth, and it does not show the Canal above its earlier peaks. For Egypt, which set the Red Sea and Suez corridor alongside coordination with Saudi Arabia in this week Cairo talks, the tonnage series is the number that turns a diplomatic subject into a fiscal one.
Outlook: the measure to follow is whether the monthly container ship run rate holds above nine million tons through the last four months of the year, because that is the period where the 2025 comparison base changes and the percentage gain will compress even if the underlying tonnage does not fall. COSCO own schedule is the second thing to track: repeated NEU2 passages would be far stronger evidence of a durable routing change than a single transit. The third is revenue. The Authority published no revenue figure alongside these tonnage numbers, and until it does, translating a tonnage recovery back into dollars stays an estimate rather than a fact.
Sources: Suez Canal Authority.
