CNBC, March 2021
The Ever Given was pulled free from the Suez Canal on Monday after cutting off traffic in the vital waterway for six days, but experts say the disruptions to global trade will continue to reverberate.
“We might celebrate the success of releasing the ship and unblocking the Suez, but that’s not the end of the story here,” said Douglas Kent, executive vice president of strategy and alliances at the Association for Supply Chain Management. “It’s definitely going to continue to backlog ports and other delivery mechanisms as a result, and then of course the chaos that disrupts thereafter,” he added.
The ship, one of the largest in the world, became horizontally wedged in the canal last Tuesday. Since then crews worked night and day to free the vessel, which at more than 1,300 feet is almost as long as the Empire State Building is tall.
Ultimately, the ship was dislodged around 9 a.m. ET on Monday after more than 10 tugboats arrived on the scene, along with specialized dredging equipment and expert salvage teams all working together to free the 220,000-ton vessel. But while traffic has now resumed in the key waterway, the repercussions after days of halted movement will continue to be felt.
