suez canal ever given
Photographers take pictures of ships sailing through the Suez Canal as traffic resumes after the "Ever Given" container ship operated by the Evergreen Marine Corporation, was freed after blocking the waterway route for almost a week.
Sayed Hassan/picture alliance via Getty Images
  • A shipping backlog of more than 400 ships was caused by the Ever Given blocking the Suez Canal.
  • The 61 ships that remain stranded are expected to pass through the waterway on Saturday.
  • Problems caused by the blockage could take months to resolve, the world's biggest shipping company warned.
  • See more stories on Insider's business page.

The shipping backlog that built up after the Ever Given container ship became lodged in the Suez Canal should come to an end on Saturday, authorities told Reuters.

The 61 remaining ships of the 422 that were left stranded after the major blockage are expected to pass through the waterway imminently, the Suez Canal Authority's chairman, Osama Rabie, said.

Around 85 ships in total are set to pass through the canal on Saturday, he added.

Read more: The 4 biggest losers of the Suez Canal fiasco – and 4 surprising winners

Last Monday, the Egyptian president's advisor for the canal authority told Bloomberg that it could take "around a week" to get all of the ships out of the canal's corridor.

If the remaining ships successfully pass through the waterway on Saturday, the backlog's end will have beaten expectations by a couple of days.

The reopening of the canal, however, will likely not mark the end of the disruption.

The world's biggest shipping company, Maersk, warned on Monday that the shipping problems caused by the Ever Given could take months to resolve, Insider's Sinéad Baker reported.

"Even when the canal gets reopened, the ripple effects on global capacity and equipment are significant and the blockage has already triggered a series of further disruptions and backlogs in global shipping that could take weeks, possibly months, to unravel," Maersk said.

The 1,300-foot Ever Given container ship was stuck for about 152 hours, with the blockage's total costs reaching an estimated $60 billion.

Rabie told local television stations that an investigation into what caused the costly jam is ongoing and will reach its conclusion next week, Reuters reported.

"The investigation is going well‮ ‬and will take two more days. Then we will announce the results," Rabie said.

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