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A cargo ship has been hit by a missile in the Red Sea, marking the second successive day of damage to vessels off Yemen as the threat from the country’s Iran-backed Houthis caused growing disruption to global trade.
Despite bombings by the US and UK aiming to counter the Houthi threat, more categories of ships began avoiding the key shipping route through the Red Sea and instead shifted to the longer journey between Asia and Europe via the Cape of Good Hope.
There was no immediate confirmation of which force fired the latest missile, but the Houthis, who have launched more than 30 attacks on commercial ships, are the only group active in the area.
Effects on manufacturing were spreading on Tuesday: Volvo Cars said it had halted production at its car factory in Belgium after the shipping disruption delayed a delivery of gearboxes, while a company operating gas tankers for Shell said its ships were also taking the longer route.
The latest missile strike hit a ship in the southern Red Sea some 100 nautical miles northwest of Saleef, Yemen, according to the UK Maritime Trade Operations.
Vanguard, a maritime security service, identified the vessel involved as the Zografia, a Malta-flagged carrier of dry bulk goods, a category of commodities that ranges from coal and iron ore to grain and steel products. Ambrey Intelligence, another maritime security service, said the ship had been hit by a missile.
The latest attack comes as more categories of ship begin avoiding the Red Sea route. Figures from Clarksons, the London-based shipping services company, showed that between January 12 and 14, arrivals of dry bulk carriers in the Gulf of Aden, by the Red Sea, had fallen 20 per cent from the rate in the first half of December.
The decline threatens delays and extra costs for industries including food manufacturing and metals that receive shipments of the many commodities that travel in dry bulk carriers.
Tuesday’s incident followed a missile strike on Monday on the Gibraltar Eagle, another bulk carrier, in the Gulf of Aden. US and UK forces launched strikes on more than 60 Houthi targets on Thursday and Friday last week in what they said was an effort to halt the attacks.
The Houthis have vowed to respond aggressively and to continue targeting ships in a campaign that they say is a response to Israel’s offensive against Hamas, the Palestinian militant movement, in Gaza.
The US Central Command said on Tuesday that the country’s navy had seized Iranian-made ballistic missile and cruise missile components on January 11 from a vessel that had been headed to “resupply Houthi forces in Yemen”. Two Navy Seals were lost at sea in the operation and the search for them continues, it said.
The latest assaults from Yemen raise the prospect that dry bulk shipowners will divert en masse away from the Red Sea route, as companies operating container ships have already done. Arrivals of container ships — which carry manufactured and semi-finished goods such as electronics — have fallen 90 per cent from early December, according to Clarksons.
Delays to shipping are already affecting some European manufacturers that rely on just-in-time deliveries. Volvo Cars said: “Due to adjusted sea routes that have resulted in a delivery delay of gearboxes, we have decided to halt production for three days this week in our plant in Ghent, Belgium.”
Volvo’s disruption comes after Tesla was forced to pause its German plant last week due to parts shortages, while Volkswagen on Tuesday said its shipping partners had been rerouting parts since last month.
One large ship operator, Japan’s NYK Line, said on Tuesday it had “temporarily suspended” Red Sea navigation for all its vessels, which include dry bulk ships, tankers, liquefied natural gas (LNG) carriers and car-carrying roll-on, roll-off ships.
“For vessels navigating near the Red Sea, NYK has instructed waiting in safe waters and is considering route changes,” the company said.
There are also signs that tankers carrying LNG are avoiding the area. Nils Kristian Strøm, managing director of Knutsen LNG, which operates six tankers for Shell, confirmed vessels operating for the company had been diverted to the longer route.
Ship tracking data from Kpler, an information service, showed that another three LNG carriers working for Qatar’s state-owned QatarEnergy — which had been due to enter the Red Sea to sail to Europe — had diverted to different routes.
Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani said the escalating attacks in the Red Sea had “changed even how we view the international trade, how we view international shipping, how interconnected we are from east to west”.
Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Sheikh Mohammed said: “I believe that if we want to address the issue, we need to address the real issue, the central issue, which is [the war in] Gaza, in order to get everything else diffused.”
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