Egypt has broken ground on a second Suez Canal parallel waterway, a $28 billion project to eliminate the single-direction bottleneck that has plagued the world’s most important shipping corridor. The 72-km parallel channel will allow simultaneous two-way transit of the largest vessels, effectively doubling the canal’s theoretical maximum capacity from 106 ships per day to over 200.
The project was accelerated following the 2021 incident in which the Ever Given container ship ran aground, blocking the canal for six days and causing an estimated $10 billion per day in disrupted trade. Egypt simultaneously announced that all vessels over 200 metres will be required to use tugboat assistance when transiting โ a safety measure also aimed at increasing revenue from tug services.
The construction timeline of 8 years includes major investment in new ports, logistics zones, and industrial areas along both sides of the new channel, with Egypt positioning the Suez Canal Economic Zone as a global manufacturing and transshipment hub.
