When the canal built a century earlier began to show signs of strain, the response was an unprecedented intervention: the Panama Canal expansion. In effect, a new and wider water highway. Its construction required millions of cubic meters of excavation, enormous volumes of concrete, and innovative technological solutions, including water-saving basins that significantly reduce water consumption during each Panama Canal transit.
And it was precisely this latest solution – the brainchild of the designers and technicians of the consortium led by Webuild – that allowed the Canal to overcome one of the most difficult challenges in its history: drought. Between 2023 and 2024, the low level of Lake Gatún, which supplies water to the Panama Canal locks, forced the canal authority to limit transits in the old canal, demonstrating the full benefit of the water reserves of the new lock system.
Today, the success of this engineering work, beyond the size of the vessels and the frequency of their passage, is measured by the very transformation of global maritime trade.
In addition to container shipping connecting Asian ports with the East Coast of the United States, the Panama Canal has become a vital gateway for American energy exports. LNG shipping (liquefied natural gas), LPG shipping, and tanker ships cross Panama daily to reach Asian markets.
And milestones have naturally accompanied this transformation. In 2024, the MSC Marie set the record for container capacity transiting the Canal, with 17,640 TEUs. The CMA CGM Zephyr, at 154,995 tons, recorded one of the highest tonnages ever to pass through the new locks. And in 2026, the Disney Adventure became the largest passenger ship in history to connect the Atlantic and Pacific through Panama, carrying approximately 6,700 passengers.
Today, the new Panama Canal is connected to 1,920 ports and serves 170 countries across 180 shipping routes. These figures tell the story of the expansion inaugurated ten years ago better than any speech ever could.
When, on June 26, 2016, the Cosco Shipping Panama – measuring 299.98 meters in length, 48.25 meters in width, and carrying 9,472 containers on board – crossed the new Agua Clara locks and the Cocolí locks for the first time, the Canal officially entered the NeoPanamax era. Today, those Panama Canal locks handle over half of the total tonnage of the Panamanian interoceanic waterway, despite representing only a quarter of the total number of transits. In other words, fewer ships compared to the total, but immensely larger and more profitable.
This is exactly what the project was conceived to do. Not simply to increase freight shipping, but to reshape the scale of global trade.
