Name? Peter Berdowski
Westphalian identity? Northern European
Age? Early 60s
Why is he in the news? Berdowski is the CEO of the Dutch company Boskalis which has been tasked with removing the Ever Given vessel from the Suez Canal. Considering he called the ship “a very heavy beached whale,” this is sure to be an ongoing process.
Why do we care? Berdowski’s company was hired by the Taiwanese Evergreen Marine Corp (which is operating the Ever Given) on a lease with Japanese firm Shoei Kisen Kaisha (which owns the ship) to work with both the Ever Given and the Suez Canal Authority to free it. We would love to be on a fly on the wall for those multicultural meetings.
Why should you care? According to Berdowski, freeing the ship could take days, even weeks, depending on the situation. In the four days that the ship has been stuck, more than 100 ships stand waiting to traverse the canal. With global shipping and the supply industry already damaged by surges in orders as a result of Covid19, this traffic jam could further disrupt orders and send the industry into crisis. If you’re waiting on a certain Amazon package or some more PPE equipment, you should care 9/10 because they are most certainly not being delivered on time.
Who else cares? Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, President of Egypt. With 10% of global trade passing through the Suez, Sisi’s government received $5.61 billion in revenue from canal tolls in 2020. Should the Ever Given remain lodged in the canal for weeks to come, many companies will undoubtedly shift their shipping routes to avoid the canal, resulting in massive revenue loss for Egypt.
Any further comments? This trade route is so important that all major world powers (even China) have a military base in Djibouti to protect the entrance toit. Who would have thought that excavators and not tanks would be needed to protect world trade?
