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Suez Canal says traffic in channel resumes after stranded ship refloated

reuters.com

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Re: Suez Canal says traffic in channel resumes after stranded ship refloated

#141

Post by ufmace »

JosephRedfern wrote: post #62

Lots of articles quote a $XXX billion dollars per day figure, but those numbers are normally for "worth of goods delayed" which, while interesting, doesn't tell the story to me. Are there any estimates as to the actual cost of this "mishap", due to e.g. spoilage, financial/contractual repercussions of late deliveries, personnel/fuel costs?

Probably the actual cost will require an army of accountants and lawyers at a dozen major logistics corporations arguing with each other for months to even try to compute. I doubt us regular uninvolved people will ever get a "real" number.

How do you even try to calculate and reveal the cost associated with say a manufacturer in the middle of a supply chain deciding to source their parts from a different vendor for this run because their usual source was delayed due to the Suez blockage and they didn't want to leave their factory idle?

Re: Suez Canal says traffic in channel resumes after stranded ship refloated

#142

Post by Clewza313 »

bombcar wrote: post #116
craftinator wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've heard from multiple sources that about $9b per day in commerce goes through the Suez, so that's probably just $9b * number of days stuck. I imagine the cost is actually quite a bit more, as the ripple effect from this traffic jam will continue for at least another month while shipments are diverted or delayed until traffic pressure returns to normal.

A better calculation is to see how much Egypt makes per day in Canal fees and use that as an estimate, as the canal fees are set to make it just a bit cheaper to use the canal vs the horn.

$14M/day seems to be the usual media estimate. I think it's safe to say the knock-on effects of several hundred ships being delayed will be more than that.

Re: Suez Canal says traffic in channel resumes after stranded ship refloated

#143

Post by ohgodplsno »

hartator wrote: post #93
debaserab2 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ever since I discovered n-gate.com HN comments read a little different than they used to...

This is some kind of weekly digest? I don't fully get it.

It's a weekly digest that makes fun of how absolutely full of shit (and themselves) HN posters are.

Re: Suez Canal says traffic in channel resumes after stranded ship refloated

#144

Post by rantwasp »

randerson wrote: post #119
scrollaway wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whenever you see such absurdly high numbers attached to cost estimates, always try to understand how they calculate it. This took the "$400 million / hour of shipped goods are being delayed" figure and ran with it by multiplying it, claiming that's the total damage cost. Now ask yourself: Let's say you're sending a parcel via UPS that contains an iphone, or simply $1000 worth of goods. At the last stopping point of t…

One impact I read about was that Egypt makes ~$300K per ship in tolls, which they won't make if ships take the long route around Africa instead.

or, they’re gonna make more money with the “rush hour” that will follow and they will only lose a small fraction of what people think they’re gonna lose

Re: Suez Canal says traffic in channel resumes after stranded ship refloated

#145

Post by Grakel »

IgorPartola wrote: post #130
turing_complete wrote: post #117

Good thing hacker news doesn't run large civil engineering projects.

You know, I used to think that HN was a collection of some of the smartest people on the Internet. Don’t get me wrong, there are some incredible people here. But I guess what I have learned over the past 10 years is that HN has as many blind spots as any other online forum. If you want SV advice, this is the place to be. If you want to dislodge a stuck mega ship, look elsewhere.

HN is a lot of amazing experts in a particular subject mostly talking about something else. It's fascinating in this way.

Re: Suez Canal says traffic in channel resumes after stranded ship refloated

#146

Post by Clewza313 »

rini17 wrote: post #89
sandworm101 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note that the egyptians were also planning for the "maybe weeks" scenerio. They were assembling the team for a litering operation (cranes etc) should the ship need to be partially unloaded. And a great many ships began to divert around africa, some of which may now be turning around. Certainly the shipping industry as a whole was headging against the "maybe weeks" option. Not everyone on HN is a software nerd. More t…

The canal has a limited capacity, so the backlog may go on for few weeks anyway.

They've said they expect to clear it in 3-4 days.

Re: Suez Canal says traffic in channel resumes after stranded ship refloated

#147

Post by ape4 »

ufmace wrote: post #141
JosephRedfern wrote: post #62

Lots of articles quote a $XXX billion dollars per day figure, but those numbers are normally for "worth of goods delayed" which, while interesting, doesn't tell the story to me. Are there any estimates as to the actual cost of this "mishap", due to e.g. spoilage, financial/contractual repercussions of late deliveries, personnel/fuel costs?

Probably the actual cost will require an army of accountants and lawyers at a dozen major logistics corporations arguing with each other for months to even try to compute. I doubt us regular uninvolved people will ever get a "real" number. How do you even try to calculate and reveal the cost associated with say a manufacturer in the middle of a supply chain deciding to source their parts from a different vendor for t…

Perhaps adding up all the penalties all the delayed ships have to pay could cover it.

Re: Suez Canal says traffic in channel resumes after stranded ship refloated

#148

Post by Clewza313 »

graywh wrote: post #81
faramarz wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apparently the high tides were maximized and were a big factor. Credit to the Moon!

so you're saying wallstreetbets played a hand in this?

Diamond hands on the dredgers. We like the ship!

Re: Suez Canal says traffic in channel resumes after stranded ship refloated

#149

Post by hilbert42 »

foxes wrote: post #86

What a surprise it didn’t need nuclear ordinance or building giant elaborate dams or millions of helicopters.

It's been blocked before but for a lot longer (from late 1956 to early 1957—about five months) during the Suez Crisis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suez_Crisis

That was a really big deal—more so than this one, I still remember the daily radio news reports and huge newspaper headlines from when I was a young kid. It was an international crisis that dragged on for months and months.

Re: Suez Canal says traffic in channel resumes after stranded ship refloated

#150

Post by formerly_proven »

skullx wrote: post #113
craftinator wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've heard from multiple sources that about $9b per day in commerce goes through the Suez, so that's probably just $9b * number of days stuck. I imagine the cost is actually quite a bit more, as the ripple effect from this traffic jam will continue for at least another month while shipments are diverted or delayed until traffic pressure returns to normal.

I would image the opposite tbh, that $9b of delayed goods per day is not lost, it's just delayed. Most of that goods, unless they are perishable goods, will sell like normal, just a bit later. There is obviously a loss here on increased costs and loss of sell opportunities due to the delay, but that figures are mega inflated IMO.

Also... ships are slow. The voyage from the Suez canal to Rotterdam or Hamburg is at least six days, so there was quite some time to prepare for a gap in supply.
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