Chokepoint
Strait of Malacca
Indian Ocean to the South China Sea
The Strait of Malacca runs between the Malay Peninsula and Sumatra and is the main sea route between the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea. It is around 2.7 kilometres wide at its narrowest navigable point. UNCTAD figures put the share of global seaborne trade passing through it at roughly a third, which makes it the busiest of the major chokepoints by volume.
What passes through it
- Asia–Europe and Asia–Middle East container services
- Energy imports bound for East Asia
- Intra-Asian feeder traffic serving Singapore and Port Klang
Typical disruption
- Congestion at Singapore and neighbouring transhipment hubs
- Groundings or collisions in the narrow navigable channel
- Piracy and armed robbery against ships, concentrated in specific stretches
- Haze and weather events reducing visibility
The alternative, and what it costs
The Sunda and Lombok straits, further south through the Indonesian archipelago. Both are navigable by large vessels and typically add in the order of three to five days. TODO: verify current routing distances with a carrier source.
What this means for your suppliers
Malacca disruption tends to show up as congestion rather than closure. The delay accumulates at the transhipment port rather than at sea, which makes it easy to miss until a container sits unmoved for a week.
If your goods tranship at Singapore, watch dwell time rather than sailing dates. A vessel that departs on schedule tells you nothing if your box was not on it.
The alternative routes exist and are used, so a sustained problem here is a schedule question rather than an availability one.
Other chokepoints
The rest of the map
See it against your own lanes
We load a sample of your suppliers, run a live scenario, and show which orders would slip.