The owner of the Ever Given, the stalled container ship that has been blocking the Suez Canal for days, is hopeful that the 220,000-tonne vessel can be pulled off Saturday night. That’s what Yukito Higaki, president of the Ship Lease company Shoei Kisen Kaisha said in a press conference for Japanese media.
Higaki explained that soil is extracted from under the ship with the help of dredging equipment, a job that the Dutch Smit Salvage helps with. Once detached, the 400 meter long Ever Given should function as usual. “The ship has no breaches. There are also no problems with the rudder and the ship’s propellers.”
CEO Peter Berdowski of Boskalis, the parent company of Smit Salvage, also showed himself to be more optimistic about the progress with the lifting of the container ship. He said that the Ever Given, if all goes well, can be released after the weekend. Earlier he did not dare to give an estimate and warned that the job could take days or even weeks.
The ship crashed on Tuesday and is so obstructed that the canal in Egypt is blocked from other ships. This is hitting global transport flows hard, because there are usually lots of ships sailing. The channel accounts for about 12% of World Trade. Almost $ 10 billion worth of goods are transported through the canal every day.
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