Market history · Infrastructure ·
A container ship blocks the Suez Canal for six days
On 23 March 2021 the container ship Ever Given ran aground in the Suez Canal and blocked it. After six days it was refloated, early on Monday 29 March. CNBC reported that about 12% of global trade passes through the canal, Lloyd's List estimated that over $9 billion of goods travel through it each day, and by the time the ship was freed more than 350 vessels were queuing at either end.
The blockage hit shipping schedules and freight rates during a year of already strained supply chains, and experts warned that the effects on the movement of goods would last for months.
It highlighted how a single point of failure in a narrow channel can disrupt global commerce, and the importance of the ports, canals and logistics that make up the world's trade infrastructure.
The takeaway
Critical infrastructure often has no spare capacity. A single incident can ripple through global supply chains.
Sources
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