The Arctic route really is shorter. It still loses to the Cape of Good Hope

A container line sells a schedule, not a great-circle distance, and this is where the Arctic saving stops converting into money. Paul Tourret, who directs the maritime economics institute ISEMAR in Saint-Nazaire, puts the usable window at August to October and says the route requires ice-class hulls that cost more ^[4]. Three open months means nine closed ones ^[3], so the premium steel has to earn its return inside a quarter of the year, or spend the rest of it on trades where the reinforcement is dead weight.

Vessel size does the rest of the damage. Tourret says the requirement rules out Supramax and the other large container ships that win business on rate ^[6], and Jerome de Ricqles of the French freight firm Upply notes that the Chinese ship Dubai Tower, which left Ningbo for Europe this month, carries about a tenth of what those hulls carry ^[7]. Matching one mainline sailing therefore takes roughly ten Arctic ones ^[4], each of which, for most container ships on the route, has to buy escort from Russia's nuclear icebreaker fleet ^[8].

The traffic figures show what that adds up to. Allianz Commercial counted a record 23 transits last year against 15 in 2024, a 53 percent rise off a base too small to mean much ^[9][2]. The Suez, degraded, still handled about 35 ships a day in the first half of this year, down from more than 50 before the Houthi attacks began in 2023 ^[11], a fall of at least 30 percent ^[5]. An entire record Arctic season equals under 16 hours of Egyptian canal traffic ^[1]. De Ricqles calls the northern route a temporary and minuscule solution against overall needs ^[18], and Coface's addressable estimate is 3.5 percent of traffic between East Asia, northern Europe and North America ^[10].

Where the arithmetic does work, it works for cargo indifferent to arrival dates. Coface found liquid bulk carrying oil and LNG could see costs cut 45 to 50 percent in some cases, with dry bulk following if escorts are available ^[12], and Eve Barre, who led the study, expects viability to 2030 to stay extremely limited and mostly confined to raw materials ^[13]. Increased traffic also brings soot that settles on the ice cap and traps heat, plus spill risk ^[17].

Barre's other observation is the one that explains the current publicity: the interest is less commercial than political, against a background of Russian, Chinese and American rivalry ^[15]. Tourret calls the two transits a sideshow, and puts it as one swallow not making a summer, and one Chinese container ship not making a Polar Silk Road ^[16]. The predictable consequence of a thinner Suez is more steaming around southern Africa, which lengthens the voyage and raises fuel costs and emissions ^[3], for the unglamorous reason that the Cape is open every week of the year.