October brought the Mediterranean its most encouraging signal in almost three years. During the first two weeks of the month, according to BIMCO (https://www.bimco.org/), container capacity transiting the Suez Canal averaged 753,000 TEU a week, against 1.46 million TEU in the same period of 2023. This is more than half of pre-crisis levels for the first time. For our ports, the return of direct services is good news because it should help to recover part of the stability and reliability of port calls lost in recent years. Egyptian ports on the Red Sea and the Mediterranean coast should be the ones that benefit most from this development.
However, the recovery of stability in the seas around the Mediterranean is still fragile. A containership was fired upon off Yemen on 7 October. At the same time, the Strait of Hormuz remains effectively closed to commercial traffic. MSC, the world’s leading container operator by fleet and capacity, has extended its piracy and Suez Canal surcharges to dozens of Mediterranean and North African destinations from mid-October. Insecurity is now part of the price of every box shipped to our region.
Investment keeps flowing to the southern Mediterranean shore. CMA CGM group completed the acquisition of its 49% stake in the concession for the western container terminal at Nador West Med. The terminal started pilot operations in September 2026 and should start receiving regular calls in the coming weeks. With the new port in Nador, the Strait of Gibraltar has become one of the world’s most concentrated transshipment areas. The application of the EU ETS to vessel calls in EU ports is seen as an opportunity to attract transshipment traffic to new terminals and ports in Morocco, but also to all non-EU Mediterranean ports.
The human side of ports is also in the spotlight. Dockworkers plan coordinated strikes and protests at more than 100 ports in at least 15 countries on 30 October. Whatever one’s view of the action, it shows that port resilience depends on people as well as infrastructure. Social dialogue on automation, employment and working conditions has to be part of our sector’s agenda. One of the main drivers of the strike on the 30th is dockworkers’ opposition to fully automated terminals. This could become a hot topic in future terminal developments in countries such as Spain, Egypt and Morocco.
On decarbonisation, uncertainty remains. The September talks on the IMO Net-Zero Framework ended without agreement, and a decision is now expected at MEPC 85, which starts at the end of next month in London. The ongoing tensions around Hormuz and Bab el-Mandeb, rising oil prices and the midterm elections in the US make a new one-year postponement far from unlikely.
All these topics are behind the first Mediterranean Most Resilient Port of the Year Award, launched by MEDPorts jointly with the Union for the Mediterranean. The winner will be honoured on 26 November in Malta, during the World Maritime Conference. We look forward to celebrating the resilience of our community there, together with all of you. Don’t miss the Gender Equality Lab either, which will also take place in Malta the day before.
Finally, the MEDPorts Presidency and the Secretariat, together with our host, the Cyprus Ports Authority, are already actively working on the programme of our next gathering in mid-January 2027, which will consist of the General Assembly and the first technical committee meetings.