Why this matters: When ships avoid the Red Sea, goods take longer and cost more to ship — which can show up in the price of everyday products.
Diversions away from the Red Sea and Suez add sea-miles, time and cost to container and tanker voyages. This explains the rerouting, insurance and freight channels, anchored on dated UNCTAD and IMF PortWatch assessments.
- Rerouting and added sea-miles
- Freight rates and capacity
- Insurance and risk cost
- Delays feeding into commodity costs
What this is about
The Red Sea — entered from the south via the Bab el-Mandeb strait and exiting north through the Suez Canal — is a primary artery between Asia and Europe. When vessels divert around the Cape of Good Hope to avoid the route, voyages get longer. UNCTAD's 2024 maritime assessments and IMF PortWatch documented sharp drops in Suez transits and the rerouting that followed during the 2023–2024 disruption. This briefing draws on those dated assessments to explain the channels; it does not assert current traffic levels.
Economic channels
The routes through which this can transmit to prices and trade. Several usually operate at once, which is why a single cause can rarely be isolated.
Rerouting and added sea-miles
Avoiding the Red Sea/Suez and sailing around southern Africa adds thousands of nautical miles and many days per voyage, tying up ships and capacity.
Freight rates and capacity
Longer voyages absorb vessel capacity, which can push container freight rates up while diversions persist — a supply-of-shipping channel.
Insurance and risk cost
War-risk insurance and security costs can rise for the affected routes, adding to the delivered cost of goods that still transit.
Delays feeding into commodity costs
Slower, costlier shipping can raise landed costs and lengthen lead times for goods and some commodities — an input-cost channel rather than a direct price cause.
What Warconomy data shows
Warconomy's Red Sea and Bab el-Mandeb chokepoint pages summarise UNCTAD and IMF PortWatch source-reported figures on Suez transit declines and rerouting during the documented disruption period. These are dated snapshots from cited assessments, not a live traffic feed.
What this does not prove
- It does not establish current Red Sea traffic or freight levels; the cited figures are dated assessments.
- It does not prove that rerouting caused any specific commodity-price change — many factors move freight and prices together.
- Warconomy does not track live ship movements or real-time freight indices.
Sources
Every figure this briefing refers to lives on a source-linked Warconomy page. The registry entries behind it:
- UNCTAD — Navigating troubled waters (Red Sea / Suez rapid assessment) — UN Trade and Development (UNCTAD) (official)
- UNCTAD — Review of Maritime Transport 2024 — UN Trade and Development (UNCTAD) (official)
- IMF PortWatch — Red Sea Attacks Disrupt Global Trade — International Monetary Fund (official)
- Suez Canal Authority — Navigation statistics — Suez Canal Authority (official)
Where to go next
Cite this page
Warconomy, “Red Sea disruption: shipping costs and commodity prices”, reviewed as of June 23, 2026. https://warconomy.com/briefings/red-sea-shipping-costs-and-commodity-prices.
Machine-readable: the JSON dataset and source registry. More citation formats on the citation catalog. Values are source-linked and manually maintained; not real-time.