The Arctic is fast becoming a viable shortcut for cargo moving between Europe and Asia. This week, the Chinese vessel Sea Legend begins regular service on what its operator calls the “ice route” across the Arctic Ocean.
The service will carry containers between Ningbo in China and Felixstowe in the United Kingdom, cutting the usual 40-day voyage by roughly half.
The far-northern passage is increasingly attractive to shipowners looking to sidestep bottlenecks such as the Bab el-Mandeb strait in the Red Sea, where attacks on shipping have flared again.
Denmark’s Mærsk was among the first to test an Arctic crossing, and the launch of a scheduled Chinese route suggests the once-experimental corridor is edging toward the commercial mainstream — with major implications for global trade and the fragile Arctic environment.