The record will not be broken. On August 1, Taiwanese shipping company Evergreen’s Ever Max ship may have become the busiest container ship to pass through the Panama Canal on its maiden voyage.
Weighing in at more than 165,000 tons, the ship had to unload hundreds of containers from Asia bound for North American markets. Sofas, decorations, Halloween costumes or even Christmas trees will have to wait before being shipped to the United States.
The ship thus unloaded some 700 containers, of the approximately 7,400 it was transporting, on trains, picked them up on the Atlantic side and continued its course towards the east coast of the United States, according to the Canal Authority. of Eikon ships.
The Panama Canal fault which is currently going through a historic drought. The Canal Authority had to reduce the maximum ship weight as well as the number of daily ship crossings in an effort to conserve water.
The transport industry under threat?
This has caused congestion and “traffic jams” at the entrance to the canal locks for several weeks. “We have had long lines of ships before,” Panama Canal administrator Ricaurte Vásquez Morales said in a statement. “Global events such as climate variability like this year, seasonal fog in the Culebra Cut, disruptions in the Scheduled maintenance and peak season are common causes. of longer waiting times.
Shipping experts fear such events could become the new normal, as rainfall deficits in the world’s fifth-wettest country highlight weather risks affecting the shipping industry, which carries 80% of trade. world.
Ship owners have the option of carrying less cargo, switching to alternative routes that can add thousands of miles to the trip, or resigning themselves to the queues that earlier this month stranded 160 ships and delayed some by up to 21 days.
The restrictions are already driving up prices for spot shipments between China and the United States by as much as 36% amid rising sea temperatures that climatologists say could outpace extreme weather.
More than 14,000 ships passed through the Panama Canal in 2022. Container ships are the most common users, transporting more than 40% of consumer goods traded between Northeast Asia and the US East Coast.
Source: BFM TV
