Markets · Issue 01
Ships are taking the long way round
Seaborne trade grew 2.2% in 2024 and is set to crawl at 0.5% in 2025. Tonne-miles jumped 6% — three times the cargo — because vessels are avoiding chokepoints. Distribution of goods is now a distance story.
- Trade volume
- Tonne-miles
- Seaborne tonne-miles, 2024
- +6%
- Trade volume, 2024
- +2.2%
- UNCTAD volume path, 2025
- +0.5%
- SCFI average, 2024
- 2,496
Volume is not work
UNCTAD’s Review of Maritime Transport 2025: after 2.2% growth in 2024, seaborne trade is set to slow to 0.5% in 2025, then average about 2% a year through 2030. The tell is the other line. Tonne-miles — cargo times distance — jumped 6% in 2024, nearly three times the volume growth. That is Red Sea diversions, Cape of Good Hope routings, longer ballast legs. The ships did more work to move almost the same stuff. Freight rates stayed ‘elevated and volatile’: the Shanghai Containerized Freight Index averaged 2,496 in 2024, +149% on 2023, with July spots around $3,600 a box, near Covid-era peaks.
Chokepoints are the product
Distribution tech for atoms still looks like a hull, a canal, and a strait. When a strait is a war, effective capacity falls even if the fleet grows. Pair this with Cables under the sea and Rearmament: the same map (Suez, Hormuz, Taiwan, the Cape) now prices insurance, fuel and delay into every container and every fibre. 2026 ocean-freight outlooks talk about 3% demand growth and a capacity-management problem. The overlay is geopolitics. A quiet year on the water is a gift. It is not a regime.
The long view is distance as a cost of capital
Nearshoring speeches have not shown up as a collapse in tonne-miles. What has shown up is a fatter tail on rates and a fleet that earns when the map is ugly. The investing lens is owners with young, efficient ships and a charter book that can reprice; ports on the diversion routes; a scepticism toward just-in-time models that assume 2019 distances. Do not buy a freight-rate spike as a permanent margin. Do buy the fact that the long way round can last.
Investing lens
Horizon 3–8 years · Educational, not advice
Tonne-miles can grow without volumes. Own flexible hulls and diversion ports. Do not capitalise a 2,496 SCFI as the new mean.
Where the map points
- Container and bulk owners with a young fleet
- Ports and bunkering on Cape and Mediterranean diversion routes
- Marine insurance and war-risk adjacent
- Avoid treating a spot spike as mid-cycle earnings
What can break it
- A ceasefire that empties the Cape overnight
- A 2026 capacity wave that crushes rates
- Trade-policy shocks that cut volumes, not just distances
CHART does not recommend securities, funds or trades. Figures can be revised by their publishers. Do your own research and consider regulated advice before allocating capital.
Sources
Every headline number traces to a named publisher. Contextual sources inform the essay, not the key stat.
- 01PrimaryUN Trade and Development2025-09-24Maritime trade under pressure — growth set to stall in 2025
Seaborne trade +2.2% in 2024, +0.5% in 2025. Tonne-miles +6% in 2024. SCFI averaged 2,496 in 2024, +149% vs 2023. July 2024 spot ~$3,600/container.
- 02CorroboratedTeleGeography2025-12-17What to Know About Transport Networks in 2026
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