According to Jonathan Roach, shipping analyst at Braemar ACM Shipbroking, the Ever Given blockage impacted container services going to and from different parts of the world, including the Indian Subcontinent, the Mediterranean and Northern Europe.
When shipowners realised that the delay was going to be prolonged, they looked into other routes.
“The alternative to a Suez transit is a lengthy diversion via the Cape of Good Hope (CGH) and this was considered by some operators,” Roach says.
Situated at the tip of South Africa, going through the Cape means circumnavigating Africa and adds several days of travels and millions of dollars in costs for services going to Asia and Europe.
“Some box ships did opt for a CGH diversion, but this was just a handful of ships and not the trend during the blockage period,” Roach adds.
The long-term consequences, which analysts believe have for the most part being resolved, focused specifically on container shipping.
“[The long-term consequences] are still felt in container shipping, as perhaps the only sector,” explains BIMCO chief shipping analyst Peter Sand. “[Effects included] logjams in ports and in the wider logistics chains, add-on disruption to an industry already full of it.”
Delays and congestion affected Danish shipping company Maersk, where the ripple effect caused by the Ever Given created congestion at terminal berths and shipyards and an increasing bottleneck through the logistics chain.
The one-week blockage impacted all the incoming vessels and led to a loss in capacity, forcing the company to play catch-up.
The company put a contingency plan into action, prioritising goods and managing the acceptance of short-term bookings.
“The new normal is still being determined, and while we are deploying all our current capacity, we expect the situation to remain tight into the third quarter and we will need to carefully manage our intake for weeks still to come,” read a Maersk insight in May.