Suez Canal has record-setting 2018

A study finds year-over-year growth of 8.2 percent for freight traffic and 3.6 percent for number of vessels that transited the waterway.    Egypt’s Suez Canal set records in 2018 for both freight traffic and the number of ships transiting the passage, according to a study by SRM, a study and research center for Southern Italy and the Intesa Paolo group, in collaboration with AlexBank.
   The study, which was presented Friday at a conference in Naples, Italy, said the canal transported 983.4 million tons of cargo last year, which was an 8.2 percent year-over-year increase over 2017’s then-record amount. The amount of goods on ships traveling north to south totaled 524.6 million tons, a 9.8 percent increase, and south to north increased 6.6 percent to 458.8 million tons.
   More than 18,000 ships used the waterway last year, a 3.6 percent increase from 2017. The average size of vessels transiting the canal in 2018 grew by 12 percent compared to 2014, which was the final year before the expansion opened in August 2015.
   Containerships were the most common vessel on the canal as 5,706 — a 2.5 percent increase — used the waterway in 2018. Containers accounted for half of all goods transited in the canal, and combined with oil represented 74 percent of its goods, the report said.
   Overall, more than 9 percent of international trade passes through the canal, according to the study.
   Traffic from Southeast Asia to the Mediterranean has jumped 37 percent in the last 11 years, the report said, with growth to and from the Gulf of Suez up 77 percent, where China is the final destination for much of the commercial interchange.