While the stuck ship, Ever Given, was stiuck in the sands of the Suez Canal, the world’s focus was riveted on the shipping industry.
This is important because the one week delay left over “360 ships” and $10bn worth of goods stuck with many ships now taking the longer route via the Cape of Good Hope at the Southern edge of Africa. The diversion will add about 1 week to their journey and increase fueling costs as they journey another 5,500 miles.
The question to ask now is why are ships so important to world trade? The quick answer is that they provide a cheaper alternative compared to air freighting which is more expensive even if much faster.
Shipping is slower, cheaper and gives more bang for your buck. Container laden ships help facilitate world commerce and experts say that if the containers stacked on the stuck Ever Given ship were laid end to end, they would stretch across 120km, that is like from Lagos to Ibadan. No plane could carry that.
Anyway with the Ever Given close to being refloated we bring you a graph of the world’s largest shipping companies and of course, the one we see its containers all over Nigeria is No. 1.
According to Statista, “Denmark’s APM Maersk has the largest fleet of container ships as well as the highest container capacity of any shipping company. It has 713 ships in operation as of late March 2021 with a collective TEU of 4.1 million. TEU stands for twenty-foot equivalent unit or a standard 6.1-meter-long shipping container. Swiss international cargo company MSC has the second highest TEU capacity with about 3.9 million while COSCO and CMA-CGM follow with approximately three million each. The owner of the ill-fated Ever Given, the Evergreen Line, has 197 ships on its books with a TEU capacity of 1.3 million.”
