Suez Canal: Freed 'Ever Given' Was Costing the Global Market $12 Billion USD in Trade Each Day
From textiles to toilet paper, get ready for supply-chain delays and price jumps.
There’s partially good news for the Evergreen Ever Given container ship that’s been stuck in Egypt’s Suez Canal while traveling from Yantian to Rotterdam. It has been nearly a week since a strong 40-knot crosswind pushed the massive 400 meter-long, 220,000 ton “Golden Class” container ship sideways into the shallow sides of the canal — some speculate that a level of human error was also involved. Now with the help of extra tugboats and dredgers, it looks like the Ever Given can begin to move, but not without leaving some sort of impact on a global scale.
While the mega container ship itself was carrying a sizable 18,300 containers, the blockage itself has caused a pile-up of close to some 400 ships. This has roughly translated to a tie-up of some $12 billion USD of goods each day for the global market. Though this delay may seem like a small ordeal, nearly 90 percent of the world’s goods are transported by sea with over 70 percent of those goods as containerized cargo.
The Suez Canal, one of the world’s most important trading routes since 1869, is responsible for 12 percent of global trade, and seven percent of the world’s oil. This well-established Asia-Europe trade route also carries with it anything from textiles, automotive parts, furniture, raw materials, and numerous FMCGs. This could ultimately have a larger supply-chain domino effect — causing things like gas, coffee, and even toilet paper to go up in price (this route sees a lot of pulp for papermaking). The thought of this delay has even forced some shipping companies to alter their routes and venture down to Africa’s longer Cape of Good Hope route, which adds two weeks and more than 3,000 miles to the trip, not to mention the fuel surcharges.
Even with the freeing of the Ever Given container ship, it is estimated that it will take an additional 10 days for all the backed-up vessels to travel freely through the Suez Canal.
🚨The Ever Given is floating🚨pic.twitter.com/GNzlzaom8q
— Evan Hill (@evanchill) March 29, 2021
Cargo ship stuck in Microsoft Flight Simulator pic.twitter.com/SczumWI5mD
— Mat Velloso (@matvelloso) March 28, 2021
In other news, Xiaomi is reportedly planning on producing electric cars.
