Ikea furniture is still stuck on the Ever Given alongside $550,000 worth of wearable blankets, 2 months after the ship was freed from the Suez Canal
- Ikea and Lenovo are among companies with products on the ship stuck in the Suez Canal, CNN reported.
- Snuggy, a small UK retailer, said it had $550,000 worth of wearable blankets on the vessel.
- Egypt has impounded the ship, the Ever Given, as a $600 million compensation battle draws out.
Ikea and the Chinese tech manufacturer Lenovo are among the companies with products still stuck aboard the Ever Given, the container ship that blocked the Suez Canal in March, CNN reported.
Smaller businesses are also still waiting for vital stock to be delivered nearly three months after the ship first got stuck. Jack Griffiths, a cofounder of Snuggy, a UK small retailer, told CNN that he felt "completely powerless and left in the dark."
Egyptian authorities have impounded the ship in the Great Bitter Lake, a wider part of the canal, as a lengthy $600 million compensation battle between the ship's owner - the Japanese company Shoei Kisen Kaisha - and the Suez Canal Authority continues.
Griffiths told CNN that more than $550,000 worth of Snuggy's hooded wearable blankets was still stuck aboard. He said that Snuggy made just two bulk orders a year and that the delay had caused cash-flow problems.
"We haven't been informed of anything - we are completely powerless and left in the dark," Griffiths told CNN. "I wish we were involved or even kept in the loop a little bit more, but we aren't. It's really not a great position to be in, and it's a hurdle most new businesses will struggle to get over."
The UK bicycle maker Pearson 1860 also told CNN that $100,000 worth of its products were on the ship.
"We don't hold out much hope of seeing our stock this year," the company director Will Pearson told CNN.
Ikea told CNN it had stock on the Ever Given, but it wouldn't give specifics. Lenovo confirmed it had cargo on the ship - a representative told CNN the company was "exploring ways to recover the goods."
Companies could be forced to pay the SCA for damages under a legal principle first developed in ancient Rhodes called "general average," which requires a ship's customers to share the costs of a failed voyage.
In March, the Ever Given got stuck for six days in the Suez Canal - the main shipping lane linking Europe to Asia - during a sandstorm, causing a backlog of 400 vessels. The SCA worked with Boskalis, a Dutch dredging company, to refloat the 220,000-ton vessel in late March.
Ikea and Lenovo did not immediately respond to Insider's requests for comment.