Suez Canal Blocked (NOW UNBLOCKED)

The ship is 200' wide, the channel there is 700', so it's 250' from the side deck to the shore. It's traveling at 21 fps....... You think that "swarm o' tugboats" is going to appear out of nowhere, get a line on and save the day in 15 seconds? Right.

How the Suez Canal really got opened

Female Captain blamed for blockage. She was 100's of miles away at the time.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-56615521

The Evergreen ship is chained in Agypt by the authorities. They are asking for 1 billion dollar compensation for the loss of income during the blockage.

The insurance or the owner will have to pay. Only the cargo on that ship is worse more than 3 billion dollar. Part of that cargo is under our management, as the final destination of the ship was Hamburg. You would not believe how many European industry is affected by the delay of that ship.

Yes, we got a panic call from a German customer who basically has reconciled to never seeing the goods on the ship. At least not seeing in time to help them. At the same time, many US customers hurt by the delays of other ships and expect to see some shortages, especially in Walmart, H&M, and PVH as well as Ikea.

What I haven't found out is any impact on chip manufacturers as many US industries are short of chips, especially the auto industry. I doubt there's a significant impact though.

There are a lot parts for the German car industry on that ship. Most of it is on time delivery. But there other industries to be hampered by this delay.

The ears of our dispatchers are glowing from the complains on the phone of the end customers. We had two more ships in the queue on the southern entry of the canal. I am glad to be retired.

Just a little example which may sound funny: There are a lot of reefer containers for liquid goods on that ship with strawberry, cherry and peach raw mixtures for the Marmelade and ice cream production in Germany. If these cargo is spoiled or will not arrive soon, the factories will have have to shut down production. In this case many grocery shops in Europe will have empty shelfs very soon.

Problem is it occurs in a period of already tight inventories and shortages. In the US there are some seemingly weird bare shelves. We have four ports significantly impacted, Savannah, Charleston, Virginia, and Newark. The Port of Virginia has six ships delaye, and 1/3 of the traffic to Savannah comes through the Suez Canal. Unlike Europe, there are many other routes used to the US as most of our Asian goods come to the west coast plus we've become much less dependent on ships with over 1/3 of our goods from China coming by air. So say 35% by air, 40% by ship to the West Coast, 25% by ship to the East and Gulf Coast. The pandemic on top of trade disputes has really disrupted the supply chain to the US from Asia and from elsewhere. Retailers more and more are finding themselves hurt by their channels of supply. That is helping domestic manufacturing, but not a lot as there isn't domestic manufacturing for the majority of the products.

We flew some goods to KaDeWe and to Karstadt. While the canal was blocked they were left not knowing when their goods would arrive from Asia.

You mention auto manufacturers and they all tried to go to various versions of just-in-time manufacturing or lean manufacturing or some even called it "Toyota" manufacturing. Basically, we'll only take it in right when needed and as soon as we finish, we'll ship it out. Theory is great, the practice far more complicated and, as seen right now, can be vary costly. US car manufacturers all experiencing shut downs. Add to all the other problems, a chip plant in Japan suffered a major fire.

Most of my cars are so old, the only chips are Doritos stuck under the passenger seat.

I am afraid this is a fact. The raw materials (fruits) come frozen from China and some other countries in Asia. But it is even much worse. Fresh fruits and vegetables like asparagus come with our cargo planes from South America, fresh grapes from South Africa, apples from Australia, flowers from Africa. But the absolut worst thing is the double frozen fish from Alaska. The fresh fisch is directly frozen on the factory catch ships, transported to China, there thawed, processed, pumped up with water and phosphates to gain weight and then being refrozen. Finally shipped in reefer containers all over the world.

I admit, we are shipping all that staff by ocean and inland waterway ships, cargo airplanes, trucks and trains all over the world but I would never eat this double frozen fish myself, Brrrr !!!! Convenience food food is the big thing for the future.

As a large logistic group based in Germany, we are automatically part of this global dealing and transporting. This Evergreen ship was built in China, is owned by a company in Japan and is managed by several logistic companies like ours in Europe. That is global economy.

The good old days, where we had general gargo ships with additional passenger cabins on fixed routes or as tramp ships under our own flag are over. Shipping companies joining to very large logitic groups and combined passenger / cargo ships are a thing of the past. Christian seafaring is dead.

Pascal, I am afraid, some of those reefer boxes were suppost to be unloaded in southern France . You have no idea what percentage of the raw material of Your food in the US is comming from China.

I am glad, I am retired.

HTMO9

No parents don't teach millenials any of the basics. I much prefer the days when we actually got local fruits and veggies that actually were ripe and had flavor.......instead of everything being picked green, 2 weeks early and shipped all over the world.

Perhaps my biggest disappointment moving to FL was the quality of fruits and melons. I figured the fact you could get the best fresh fruit and melons in NYC anytime of the year, certainly with much of it coming from FL you'd find great in FL. I was so wrong. I haven't been to NY now in a couple of years, but when I did go, I use to love the fresh fruit and melons all the small corner groceries had. Now, none of this has anything to do with the Suez Canal.

50% of the nutrients in fruit, the fruit gains in the last 2 weeks on the vine......so even if you ripen them, they still don't taste the same as ones picked at the right time.........and no I don't like waiting a week for it to ripen and 2 days for it to spoil!!!!!!!!!!

This thread has veered further off course than the ship in the Suez. Time to let it rest. Thread closed.

The offending ship is under arrest by the Egyptians; They lost big bucks on the blockage and now trying to collect.
Not sure the owner’s, the operator, or the insurance company have deep enough pockets to cover the canal losses.
Egyptian Stand Off..