The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) has published its Review of Maritime Transport 2025 report, exploring the global maritime trade environment which has been marked particularly by volatility, rerouted flows and uncertainty.
According to the Review of Maritime Transport 2025 report, maritime trade volumes reached 12,720 million tons in 2024, growing by 2.2 per cent, exceeding the 2013–2023 average (1.8 per cent). This suggests positive momentum, yet the growth rate lagged the 2003–2023 average (2.9 per cent), indicating a longer-term deceleration in the expansion of global volume. However, in 2025, global maritime trade continues to navigate an environment marked by volatility, rerouted flows and uncertainty.
“Not since the closure of the Suez Canal in 1967 have we witnessed such sustained disruption to the arteries of global commerce,” said Rebeca Grynspan, Secretary-General of UNCTAD.
Key highlights of the Review of Maritime Transport 2025 report:
- In 2025, global maritime trade is operating in a volatile and uncertain environment, with shipping routes increasingly rerouted.
- Persistent geopolitical tensions and trade policy changes have altered shipping patterns, with many routes redirected away from traditional chokepoints.
- Containerized trade is expanding, especially along extra regional corridors.
- East–West routes remain dominant, anchored by Asia’s central role in global logistics.
- Supply chains are increasingly diversified, with more complex origin and destination networks emerging to manage rising uncertainty.
- Energy-related trade is undergoing a structural transformation.
- Longer hauls and redirected flows are affecting tanker demand.
- Trade in critical minerals, vital to clean energy transitions, remains concentrated in a handful of exporters.
- This concentration heightens exposure to strategic and logistical chokepoints.
Geopolitical tensions and disrupted maritime chokepoints In 2024 and the first half of 2025, global shipping grappled with rapidly shifting operating conditions driven by trade policy shifts and tariffs, geopolitical tensions, ongoing disruption to critical shipping routes, intensified pressure on the shipping industry to decarbonize and a restructuring in global container shipping alliances.
In addition, the sector faces strengthened environmental sustainability targets and regulations, advances in technology, fleet renewal needs, and continued uncertainty over the decarbonization and energy transition.
New ship capacity continues to be delivered, especially in the container segment, while trade growth in some markets has slowed. This is reviving some concerns about a potential fleet capacity surplus and asset underutilization when distance-adjusted demand, which had absorbed surplus capacity over the past few years, eventually normalizes.
The Review of Maritime Transport 2025 reveals ongoing uncertainty around navigation in the Red Sea which has led to shipping avoiding the Suez Canal, with transit levels about 70% below 2023 averages as of May 2025. This has increased distance-adjusted demand due to rerouting around the Cape of Good Hope, which may ease if geopolitical tensions subside.
Download the report: UNCTAD Review of Maritime Transport 2025