Greater sailing distances on the round-Africa routing would, all else equal, lead to higher fuel consumption, and hence an increase in slot cost. Assuming that the vessels are well-utilized, which should be the case now, deploying larger, more fuel-efficient vessels, should bring these increased slot costs down. If we look at the average vessel size on Asia-North Europe, there has been moderate volatility, but the trend line is almost perfectly horizontal, meaning an unchanged average vessel size. On Asia-Mediterranean, there is a clear upwards trend, but that started in the second half of 2023, well before the first Houthi attack in the Red Sea (....)