Suez Canal incident to cost $1 bln
The global market and the shipping industry have been bleeding cash since Tuesday, when the Ever Given containership ran aground in the Suez Canal.
With some 170 vessels stranded north and south of the canal in Egypt and about 50 more joining the queues with every day that passes, according to VesselsValue, the bill for the international market is rising by the minute, while the prospect of freeing the Evergreen-owned vessel, which the windy weather has kept wedged across the canal, blocking it, remains quite remote.
The industry itself is set to lose about $30-40 million euros in total if the Ever Given is freed by Sunday, VesselsValue told Kathimerini on Friday, though it appears unlikely this is going to happen any time soon.
The London-based vessel valuation service calculates that the global cost of the incident would come to $130-140 million if the ship were freed on Sunday. This would rise to $300 million if the canal reopened by March 31, while if the baseline estimate about the ship not moving before April 5 proves correct, the global cost of the incident would reach $1 billion, VesselsValue estimates.
