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

Businesses are still waiting for their products stuck on the Ever Given ship

Ahmad Hassan / AFP via Getty Images

• IKEA and Lenovo are among the companies with products stuck on the Ever Given ship 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 as a $600 million compensation battle draws out.
• See more stories on Insider's business page.

IKEA and 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, co-founder 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 - Japanese company Shoei Kisen Kaisha - and the Suez Canal Authority (SCA) continues.

Griffiths told CNN that more than $550,000 worth of Snuggy's hooded wearable blankets was still stuck aboard. He said Snuggy makes just two bulk orders per 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. I wish we were involved or even kept in the loop a little bit more, but we aren't," Griffiths told CNN. "It's really not a great position to be in and it's a hurdle most new businesses will struggle to get over."

UK bicycle-maker Pearson 1860 also told CNN it had $100,000 worth of its products on the ship.

"We don't hold out much hope of seeing our stock this year," company director Will Pearson told CNN.

IKEA told CNN that it had stock on the Ever Given, but wouldn't give specifics. Lenovo confirmed it had cargo on the ship - a spokesperson 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 for comment.

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