Shipping safety fears mean more vessels are avoiding the Red Sea.

Hello, you're listening to the Marketplace Morning Report.

Live from the BBC World Service, I'm Leanna Byrne and a very good morning to you.

One in five major commercial ships are now avoiding the Red Sea

because of the threat of attack according to the head of the

international chamber of shipping.

Instead, they're using the alternative route around the southern tip of Africa and that can add anything from seven days to two weeks to a vessel's journey and that's adding to cost.

The British Retail Consortium, which represents companies in the UK, says higher shipping,

and insurance costs could have a knock-on effect on product availability and prices.

Rachel Wearing, she runs Wearing's furniture in the UK which imports furniture to supply the hospitality industry.

She told us about the impact this was having.

Well we were due to have a container land the week before Christmas and it's going round Cape of Good Hope.

So it's at least three to four weeks, which is very problematic. This particular client is a holiday

resort and they refurbish all the lodgers over the off-peak season so it is problematic.

We always organize our own shipping so this one was already prebooked and the price was set

but obviously for that company they will have lost money on this route because they've got to pay

the staff for that extended length of time, feed them, it's a big impact on them.

So obviously they're going to try to recompense for that loss on these current shipments.

And also we just don't know how long this is going to go on for.

And what about pricing? What is she seeing?

The peak of COVID container shipping prices went up to $10,000 per container

where it used to be sort of back 1,200.

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