German shipping giant Hapag-Lloyd has shuffled its East Med Express (EME) line to drop calls at DP World’s London Gateway Terminal in order to boost schedule reliability and service performance on the route, according to a statement. The EME, linking Europe to Port Said via Rotterdam, Bremerhaven, and Antwerp, will instead call at the UK’s Tilbury Port effective 18 January.

Why it matters

The shipping line is joining several others who already made the move last year. This includes major players CMA CGM, HMM, ONE, Cosco, Maersk, and MSC, all of whom dropped London Gateway from their schedules for either Southampton or Felixstowe in 2025, Xeneta’s senior market analyst Destine Ozuygur said in a note last month.

The trend is due to a 28% decline in London Gateway’s services between May and December, driven by “structural services changes” in the port, Xeneta’s Ozuygur said. The port experienced a 58% y-o-y absolute lost capacity at 2 mn TEUs in 2025 — which comes in stark contrast to the 11% y-o-y capacity growth in 2024 and the previously expected 18% y-o-y increase for last year.

What’s behind the exodus?

The gateway’s hail-mary is also the thorn in its side. DP World is currently developing its GBP 1 bn berth expansion project — underway since May — which will add some 450k TEUs of annual handling capacity upon completion in 2030. However, while the project is under construction, reduced working zones may have exacerbated issues relating to operability and capacity — an expected knock-on effect for mega projects like this one.

But it isn’t just current construction works — London Gateway’s congestion troubles are also driven by Red Sea volatility. With larger vessels usually being deployed for the longer voyages around the Cape of Good Hope, handling times have gone up. The port’s congestion average increased by as much as 60% between 3Q 2024 and 1Q 2025 before peaking at 57% in April. The expansion project’s launch the following month added to wait times.

And unpredictable elements have piled on even more, with the port experiencing a series of tech and power outages, along with a rail incident, in June and July. All this has resulted in a massive container backlog and may have been the swaying factor in major players scaling back port calls between May and December.

What’s next?

Worry not, this is likely not a long-term trend. “Moderate but prolonged risks are balanced against strategic value,” Xeneta’s Ozuygur said. The London Gateway has the highest handling capacity and most diverse global port connectivity — boasting 104 unique port connections — of UK ports. This, coupled with the firm's ongoing expansion project, signals that congestion stressors are driving a short- or medium-term impact rather than a long-term one.

Background

Big plans for the hub: DP World aims for London Gateway to become the biggest container port in the UK in terms of trade volume within the next five years, committing GBP 1 bn (c. USD 1.3 bn) in investments for the port. The UAE major launched a construction works tender for a new GBP 72 mn container storage yard at the gateway in May, and is working to plug GBP 170 mn into installing new container handling technology in October.

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