The huge ship that blocks the Suez Canal can be a titanic headache – revealing a lack of toilet paper not seen since the early days of the coronavirus pandemic.
The owner of Ever Given, the 200,000-ton giant that ran aground this week when strong winds turned it aside, apologized for the megablock, which is causing a global trade crisis.
But the proverbial s – t could really hit the fan if it triggered another TP crisis, as a flotilla of cargo ships remains trapped behind the huge ship.
Walter Schalka, CEO of Suzano SA, a Brazilian pulp company, told Bloomberg News that the company was struggling to transport the raw material for toilet paper amid the delays.
The Suez bottleneck comes amid a shortage of shipping containers, caused by increased demand in China and reduced supply, Express said.
Schalka is concerned that the problems with shipments will worsen – causing major disruptions in the pulp trade, which could impact the supply of toilet paper if producers do not have enough stocks, according to Bloomberg.
Suzano, headquartered in São Paulo, accounts for about a third of the global supply of short fiber pulp.
About 50 ships normally pass through the Suez Canal every day, but they have been blocked since Ever Given, registered in Taiwan, ran aground.
Lars Jensen, a container transport specialist in Denmark, told the Mirror in the UK that shipping of everyday household items will be affected, including rolls of toilet paper.
“Basically, everything you see in stores,” he said.
Jensen said the blocked ship is another blow to the global shipping system already broken by the disruption of the pandemic.
“It takes away the capacity of a system that is already starving,” he said, The Sun reported.
Peter Berdowski, CEO of the Dutch company Boskalis, which is trying to displace the giant ship, said it is too early to say how long it can take.
The bow and stern were raised against both sides of the canal, he said, according to The Sun.
“We cannot exclude that it can take weeks, depending on the situation,” Berdowski told Dutch TV. “It’s like a huge stranded whale. It’s a huge burden on the sand. “
He added: “We may have to work with a combination of weight reduction by removing containers, oil and water from the ship, tugs and sand dredging.”