Egypt, Europe, and the Suez Canal Crisis (10/28/25)

Ellie Thornton

Hello hello, and welcome back to Milestones Behind the Freight Curtain! I'm Ellie Thornton, your overly excited Brit, as always, and I'm joined by Steve DeNunzio. Hi Steve! This week, we're diving into the Suez Canal crisis, which is honestly wild. The headlines have been all doom-and-gloom, but once you look at the details, you realise just how dramatic the impact is, not just for Egypt, but, kinda, for all of us.

Steve DeNunzio

Hey, Ellie! Glad to be back. And yeah, this is one of those issues where you feel the ripple all the way from the docks in Egypt to the shelves in, you know, some supermarket in Ohio. Let’s just start with the stuff right at the source. Because the Suez is, uh, under real threat right now. Most of the freight world has probably seen all those images—ships, containers stacked high, just sitting out there in the Red Sea, not moving. The Hooty attacks in the region? They’ve basically forced a ton of vessels to completely bypass the canal, going all the way around Africa. That’s thousands of extra miles. Logistically, I mean, that's, to put it lightly, a full-on nightmare.

Ellie Thornton

Totally. And it’s not just about shipping insurance rates going up, or ships running late. Egypt’s entire economy relies, well, maybe that's too strong—let’s say, seriously depends—on the fees it collects from ships crossing the canal. Now, with most companies avoiding the route, Egypt’s Suez income has just nosedived. I think there was a report of, like, what, a 50 per cent drop in revenue in just a few months, which is massive. And, you know, for a country like Egypt that’s already got sky-high inflation and, like, loads of foreign currency headaches, this just pours fuel on the fire.

Steve DeNunzio

Right, those foreign currency shortages are hitting hard. They’ve had to devalue the currency how many times now? Their central bank is, I think, running on fumes. And it just kind of creates this vicious cycle—because lower income from the Suez means fewer dollars, and if you don’t have enough dollars, you can’t pay for imports, so everything gets more expensive and inflation just spirals out. It’s the kind of economic whiplash that, if you work in logistics or retail, you’re very familiar with. Actually, it sort of reminds me of when the Evergreen Ever Given got stuck in 2021. Remember that, Ellie? That was one ship, for what, a week? And it scrambled supply chains all over the globe. Now, multiply that disruption by months… and you see how these Red Sea security issues are having an even greater global punch.

Ellie Thornton

Yeah, I remember the memes—honestly, dark days for memes but even darker for ocean freight. But, like you said, Steve, that was just one stuck ship. Now it’s sustained, and it’s hundreds of ships changing course altogether. There are going to be all these downstream impacts we don't even see yet, which brings us right to Europe, where it’s, frankly, chaos in the ports.

Steve DeNunzio

Yeah, let’s talk about that. Because if you’re running a business in Europe—whether it’s fashion in Milon, car parts in Germany, or groceries in Leeds—you’re feeling it. First off, shipping costs are up, way up, because those ships now have to burn more fuel, take the long way 'round. That’s already feeding into higher prices at the store. Then you’ve got congestion at the northern European ports, like Rotterdam or Antwerp, or even Tilbury in the UK, as shipments do these weird detours and pile up in unpredictable batches. It’s a mess for just-in-time supply chains.

Ellie Thornton

And you know Steve, even for normal people like me, it’s suddenly super noticeable. I was chatting with my friend who manages a little chain of shops here in London—it’s like, trendy home stuff, and, er, the spring collection? Delayed by, like, five weeks. So she’s got boxes and boxes of tea towels with daffodils on them just waiting somewhere on a ship off the coast of Spain. That’s, what, the sort of thing that seems minor, but if you add up thousands of businesses with those delays, it’s gonna show up in weird ways. And it all loops back to inflation—everything takes longer, costs more, and retailers hate that unpredictability.

Steve DeNunzio

And policymakers in Brussels, they know it. That’s why, at the most recent summit—President el-Sissi from Egypt was there, meeting with the top EU leaders. They basically promised new financial aid, trying to stabilise the Egyptian economy, which, in turn, keeps things a bit less chaotic for European businesses. Plus, they added Egypt to the, uh, Horizons innovation programme, bringing them into some R&D efforts. So it’s more than just crisis cash—it’s about trying to create longer-term cooperation and stability for trade flows.

Ellie Thornton

Yeah, I love seeing a bit of collaboration—I mean, maybe it’s naive, but involving Egypt in those tech and science projects could be brilliant if it actually helps shore things up for the future, instead of just sticking on a bandage and hoping the canal sorts itself out. And, sort of, by the way, all this ties right into another issue: migration, which is suddenly getting a lot more attention again on both sides of the Mediterranean.

Steve DeNunzio

Absolutely, and that's the part a lot of folks in the logistics world don’t realise ties straight back to stability in Egypt. Europe’s rolling out what they're calling a Pact for the Mediterranean—with Egypt and some of its neighbours. The short version is, if Egypt helps control migration more tightly, and manages its borders, the EU sends over aid, investment, all sorts of support. They’re trying to stem this big increase in asylum-seeker flows, especially now that instability is making more people leave home.

Ellie Thornton

And it’s not just some numbers in a press release—these are people, right? Egypt already hosts, I think, over 9 million migrants. That’s more than I realised, honestly! If Egypt’s economy tanks, the pressure on both sides just ramps up. The EU’s basically betting that if Egypt’s stable, businesses do better, there’s less migration, and everyone wins—at least in theory. But that makes Europe even more reliant on Egypt for, well, everything from supply chains to border control. That’s a bit of a gamble.

Steve DeNunzio

Yeah, and I’m glad you mentioned the humanitarian side, Ellie, because there’s always that tension, right? You want security, you want stable trade, but you don’t want to lose sight of what’s happening to actual human beings in the process. And the EU is putting up billions in loans and investments—there’s a major effort here to create, uh, deeper trade and security ties. But it’s tricky to balance those goals. When you’ve got millions of migrants already in the country, rising inflation, food prices—just basic stability is hard to guarantee. Like, we’ve seen this before: instability in one country can shift migration patterns overnight, and sometimes the unintended consequences are even more disruptive for the region.

Ellie Thornton

Definitely—and, you know, trade, security, migration, it all blurs together. It’s the same lesson we talked about after the Panama episode and even the Arctic shipping deep-dive—geopolitical issues are never just about ships and ports. They’re, like, people’s livelihoods, and the policies ripple out in all directions. Anyway, I reckon we’ll be circling back to this—who knows what’s next for the Suez, or even for Egypt and Europe.

Steve DeNunzio

Yeah, this is a topic that definitely isn't going away. We’ll keep tracking these ripple effects, and, uh, hopefully next time we’ll have some brighter news out of the Suez. Ellie, it’s always fun chatting—

Ellie Thornton

Likewise Steve! Thanks everyone for tuning in. We’ll catch you next time on Milestones Behind the Freight Curtain. Cheers!

Steve DeNunzio

Take care, everybody. And remember, you can always email us at milestones at Steve DeNunzio dot com. See you next time!