A Chinese company is preparing to sail a cargo ship along Russia’s northern coast to Europe— a test run made possible by melting ice and accelerating climate change, and one that has implications for both international trade and the environment.

China is sending the Istanbul Bridge container ship on an 18-day trip from Ningbo-Zhoushan port — the world’s largest — to Felixstowe in the U.K. on Sept. 20, accompanied by ice breakers. The goal is not a one-off voyage — that’s been done before — but to establish a regular service via Russia’s Northern Sea Route linking multiple ports in Asia and Europe.

“The larger picture is that the Arctic is opening up,” said Malte Humpert, senior fellow and founder of the Arctic Institute, a Washington-based think tank that studies Arctic security. “Twenty years ago it was frozen. But now that it’s melting and something is opening up, there’s interest.”

For Humpert, the impact may be bigger than shipping schedules. “The Arctic is the first region where climate change is changing the geopolitical map. If we didn’t have climate change, we wouldn’t be talking. Russia would not be producing oil and gas in the Arctic. China would not be sending container ships through the Arctic.”

“It’s the first large region on the globe where climate change is rapidly and actively changing the geopolitical dynamics — because of resources, access to shipping routes, and because a new region is suddenly accessible.”

Playing the long game

For now, global trade flows through the usual chokepoints.

“The majority of global trade goes through the Suez Canal, Mediterranean, Singapore,” Humpert said. “But the Arctic is 40 percent shorter and it has a lot less geopolitical uncertainty … so it could potentially become an alternative trade route. The question is, is it really happening? And how quick?”

Peter Sand, chief analyst at shipping consultancy Xeneta, noted the idea is hardly new. “It has been debated, talked about, tried out a number of times over the past decades,” he said. China is just the latest to push it forward: “They announced a similar thing two years ago. They did it then, and now they’re trying again.”

Earlier Chinese voyages, however, were simpler. “They did point-to-point trips, like from one Chinese port to Hamburg or to St. Petersburg,” Humpert said. “This voyage is different. They’re trying four ports in China, then through the Arctic, then the U.K., Rotterdam, Hamburg and Gdańsk. That actually resembles a normal shipping route.”

Unlike tramp shipping — where cargo is taken where it’s needed usually with no fixed schedule — liner-type container routes run on set timetables between specific ports whether the ships are full or not. The Chinese experiment in the Arctic is closer to the latter: less a one-off and more a rehearsal for a conventional Asia–Europe loop.

But the scale remains minuscule.

“What they’re deploying is equal to maybe 1 percent of the Far East–North Europe trade,” Sand noted. The Arctic only makes sense when demand is high and shaving off days matters. “Nobody lives in the Polar region. The only way it competes is when extra capacity and shorter transit times outweigh higher freight rates.”

So for now, the route looks like a seasonal side-project. “It’s not here to shake trade lanes as they’re set up today,” Sand said. “But it could be one of those niche services that appear during peak season over the next decade.”

Humpert sees the experiment as planting a flag for the future. “The Suez Canal has like 10,000 ships every year, so this is very, very little,” he said. “But if you play this 30 or 40 years into the future, and the ice melts another 30, 40, 50 percent, suddenly you have six months of no ice, and the Arctic becomes a very interesting equation.

“The Arctic is not going to replace the Suez Canal tomorrow. That’s not what’s happening. The Suez Canal, the Panama Canal, they will remain there. But the Arctic will become supplemental.”

That this experiment is even possible is thanks to climate change. “These changes are happening quicker than anyone expected, even five or 10 years ago,” Humpert said.

“Ten years ago, everyone thought that before 2040 or 2050, we would not see container shipping in the Arctic. And here we are in 2025, and the Chinese are doing it,” he added. “Do they make money? It doesn’t really matter … it’s about gaining the knowledge, understanding how to do it. That’s what the Chinese are doing — they’re gaining the experience and training the shipping crews.”

But there might also be a more immediate prize for the voyage — getting to Europe ahead of the rush of other Chinese shippers.

“All the Chinese Christmas stuff that we buy in Europe gets shipped from China at the end of September,” Humpert said. “Normally it takes 40 to 50 days, so it arrives in Rotterdam in early to mid-November. But everything arrives at once, creating traffic jams. Big ships can wait one or two weeks before they get into Rotterdam or Hamburg. By going through the Arctic, this ship will arrive three to four weeks earlier, when the ports are empty.”

If the trip works, it could also have implications for Europe’s car sector. “For containers, you need a string of stops — one port after another. Maybe that works for 10 percent of container shipping, maybe only 1 percent. No one really knows,” Humpert said. “But cars are different. You load 10,000 electric vehicles in China, and you offload 10,000 in Rotterdam or Hamburg. No in-between stops. That’s an area we may be seeing in 10 or 15 years.”

Risky route

But the opportunity comes with heavy risk. The Arctic is warming three to four times faster than the rest of the planet. Less ice may make passage easier, but it also magnifies the damage when things go wrong.

Black carbon from bunker fuels is especially destructive when released near snow and ice. “It does five times the damage there than if it’s emitted farther away,” said Andrew Dumbrille, adviser to the Clean Arctic Alliance. Add the reality that spill response in the Arctic is slow and limited, and the stakes rise sharply. “Once oil is in the water, every hour without response means huge damage,” he said.

And the vessel making this pioneering run hardly inspires confidence. The Istanbul Bridge — a 25-year-old, Liberian-flagged container ship — is not ice-strengthened, Dumbrille noted. “There will be an escort around it, but still, it’s not strengthened. It also will likely use heavy fuel oil on its journey, or bunker fuels.”

Even though heavy fuel oil was technically banned by the International Maritime Organization in July 2024, loopholes remain. Spills of the sludge-like fuel are nearly impossible to clean up, lingering in ecosystems for years. Then there’s noise pollution, invasive species and disruption to marine life.

Dumbrille said the next chance for tougher global rules will come in February 2026, when the IMO’s pollution prevention and response subcommittee meets — with experts and green groups already pushing for stricter fuel regulations in an increasingly busy Arctic.