$500 per TEU: Comparing the New Panama Canal Surcharges

The three carrier notices reviewed here attach Panama Canal charges to Asia–North America trades. The Panama Canal Authority, in the same window, has said that its latest draft reductions do not change how many ships can transit each day.

Those statements are not contradictory. A lower maximum draft can reduce how much cargo a vessel can carry even when the number of authorised daily transits stays unchanged. But that distinction does not mean transit access is loose: queues and expensive booking-slot auctions show that demand for Panama passages is also running high.

For shippers, that makes the surcharge question more complicated than simply asking whether Panama has cut transit slots. The relevant constraints are vessel intake, access to desirable transit windows and, most immediately, the tariff trigger written into each carrier’s notice.

What was announced

Carrier	Charge	Scope	Amount	Effective	What decides applicability
CMA CGM	Panama Canal Adjustment Factor	Far East to US East Coast and US Gulf via the Panama Canal	US$320 per TEU initially; US$500 per TEU from 10 Sep	25 Jul 2026 initially; revised rate from 10 Sep 2026	All cargo. Shipments from Bangladesh to the US East Coast are excluded under the September notice. The published September notice does not name the tariffing milestone
MSC	Panama Canal Surcharge	Southeast Asia, China, South Korea and Japan to US East Coast and US Gulf Coast	US$100 per TEU initially; US$149 per 20ft, US$297 per 40ft and US$376 per 45ft from 12 Sep	19 Aug 2026 initially; revised rates from 12 Sep 2026	Gate-in date. All cargo types, until further notice
Hapag-Lloyd	Panama Canal surcharge	Far East to North America via the Panama Canal	US$130 per TEU	Sailings commencing 15 Aug 2026	All equipment types, until further notice

Carrier amounts, scopes and effective dates as published. CMA CGM introduced a US$320-per-TEU charge from 25 July before increasing it to US$500 per TEU from 10 September. MSC introduced US$100 per TEU from 19 August before revising its rate structure for gate-ins from 12 September.

The unit is where this gets expensive. From 10 September, CMA CGM’s charge is US$500 per TEU, so a standard 40ft box carries US$1,000 rather than US$500. Against Drewry’s Shanghai to New York spot rate of US$8,706 per 40ft on 13 August, that is close to 11.5% added to the headline number.

Before that increase, CMA CGM’s US$320-per-TEU charge equates to US$640 on a 40ft container. MSC’s initial US$100-per-TEU charge is US$200 per 40ft, or roughly 2.3% of the Drewry benchmark. From 12 September, its revised US$297 rate for a 40ft box works out around 3.4%. Hapag-Lloyd’s US$130 per TEU amounts to US$260 per 40ft, or about 3.0%.

From 10 September, that leaves a nearly fourfold spread between CMA CGM’s and Hapag-Lloyd’s charge on a standard 40ft container. The difference is worth taking to your account manager. The same unit trap appeared in last week’s surcharge notices, where one CMA CGM charge was per container and another per TEU.

What the canal actually did

The Panama Canal Authority has announced a sequence of reductions to the maximum authorised draft at the Neopanamax locks, citing water levels and projected conditions at Gatun Lake.

Effective	Maximum authorised draft, Neopanamax locks
3 July 2026	49.5 ft (15.09 m) TFW
24 July 2026	49.0 ft (14.94 m) TFW
15 August 2026	48.5 ft (14.78 m) TFW
26 August 2026	48.0 ft (14.63 m) TFW
3 September 2026	47.5 ft (14.48 m) TFW

Tropical fresh water drafts as announced by the Panama Canal Authority. The design maximum is 50.0 ft (15.24 m).

For the 26 August and 3 September adjustments, announced 5 August, the authority was explicit: “The draft adjustment will not affect the number of daily vessel transits.” It attributes that resilience to water-conservation measures implemented since December 2025.

The contrast with the last major drought is useful. During the 2023 drought, the canal cut the Neopanamax draft to 44 feet and capped daily transits at 32 by August, when queues exceeded 160 vessels. It subsequently announced deeper reductions, moving toward 24 daily transits in November and 22 in December.

This year’s latest sequence takes the Neopanamax limit from 50 feet to 47.5 feet without an accompanying reduction in the number of authorised daily transits.

So what is being priced

A lower draft limit reduces how much a deeply loaded vessel can carry on a given transit. That is different from reducing the number of transits available each day.

But the second constraint has not disappeared. Strong demand has produced substantial vessel queues and unusually expensive auctions for Neopanamax booking slots. Panama therefore has two different capacity questions in play: how much a vessel can take through the locks, and how costly or difficult it is to secure the preferred transit window.

For a carrier running a Neopanamax ship close to its permitted draft, the intake loss is real and creates a plausible cost to recover. The complication is that the published charges generally apply across the covered trade rather than according to how heavily the individual vessel carrying a specific container is loaded.

A smaller vessel may be substantially less affected by a 47.5-foot draft limit than a deeply loaded 15,000-TEU ship, depending on its design and loading condition. A flat per-container surcharge does not make that distinction.

None of that makes the charges improper. It does mean the published surcharge should not automatically be read as a direct measure of the capacity lost on the vessel carrying your cargo. That is a reasonable distinction to raise in a rate conversation.

MSC is routing Sierra through Panama at the same time

According to DynaLiners citing Alphaliner, MSC is overhauling its Far East–Mexico Mexicas and Sierra services. Ningbo and Qingdao switch between the two loops, while the Sierra service is being rerouted through the Panama Canal and extended to Venezuela.

The revised Sierra rotation runs Ningbo, Shanghai, Busan, Manzanillo, Lázaro Cárdenas, Colón, La Guaira, Puerto Cabello, Colón and back to Ningbo, on eight vessels of 4,250 to 6,500 TEU. Mexicas keeps seven ships of 4,250 to 6,000 TEU on Qingdao, Tianjin, Busan, Manzanillo, Lázaro Cárdenas and back to Qingdao.

A carrier rerouting a service through the canal in the same period that it introduces a Panama surcharge is not necessarily contradicting itself. The Canal Authority has maintained its daily transit allowance despite the draft reductions, so passages remain available. But high queues and slot-auction prices show that securing the preferred passage can still be costly.

The useful distinction is that the surcharge is not evidence, by itself, that Panama has cut the number of ships it allows through each day. The operational pressure can instead come from lower vessel intake, strong demand for transit access, or both.

What to check before you quote

There is no single date field that works across all three carriers.

For MSC cargo, the deciding field is the gate-in date rather than the booking date. Containers gating in from 19 August can attract the initial US$100-per-TEU charge, while the revised US$149-per-20ft, US$297-per-40ft and US$376-per-45ft structure applies to gate-ins from 12 September.

CMA CGM already has a US$320-per-TEU Panama Canal Adjustment Factor in effect from 25 July. That rises to US$500 per TEU from 10 September. The September notice does not identify the tariffing milestone, so confirm the applicable date field with the carrier rather than assuming that the booking date controls.

Hapag-Lloyd uses a different trigger again: its US$130-per-TEU charge applies to sailings commencing 15 August on covered Far East–North America cargo routed through the Panama Canal.

Check the origin scope as well. MSC’s revision covers Southeast Asia, China, South Korea and Japan. CMA CGM’s September notice covers the Far East but carves out Bangladesh to the US East Coast. Hapag-Lloyd describes its scope as Far East to North America via Panama. Cargo consolidated across several origins may therefore not attract the same charge uniformly.

The practical exercise is to filter Panama-routed bookings by carrier first, then apply the relevant milestone: gate-in for MSC, sailing commencement for Hapag-Lloyd, and the carrier-confirmed tariffing milestone for CMA CGM. A booking-date-only report can miss cargo that becomes chargeable later in the shipment cycle.

That sort depends on knowing where each container actually is against the milestone the carrier is tariffing on, which is a tracking question before it is a pricing one.

One more reason to run it now: the US accounts for the majority of Panama Canal traffic, with 52% of 2024 transits having a US origin or destination and more than 76% of the cargo. If Gatun Lake continues to fall and the authority eventually has to reduce daily transits as well as draft, additional carrier cost pressure and further surcharge changes become more plausible.

Need help interpreting this disruption or your shipment?
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Prefer email? Contact us directly at min.so@tradlinx.com (Americas), sondre.lyndon@tradlinx.com (Europe), or henry.jo@tradlinx.com (EMEA/Asia).

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