Kalistan

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Port Elga Sees Backups in shipping and Receiving after Baltusian Response
"The Empire will experience backups for months" says SSC Chief
Sulari, Duchy of Suldanor
April 7, 5654


Port Elga, Seleya's busiest Port, experiencing "Several Month Backlog" due to Bottleneck

The CEO of Sulari Shipping Consortium, Max Caballo announced that Port Elga is experiencing a fairly significant backup that will reportedly take months to clear. "When the Empire recently opened fully to trade with Baltusia, we did experience a sharp uptick in shiping emanating from Sulari, and transiting through Sulari on the Trans Seleyan Railroad," said Caballo in Sulari. "Now that that door was suddenly slammed shut, the commerce expected to transit out of Sulari on rail is suddenly stuck here, waiting for ships to reroute it. Meanwhile, we have been taking receipt of our normal stock on top of this, and suddenly we are short of shipping capacity and long on Container capacity."

SSC-Port Elga, the company that manages Port Elga, said the backlog is expected to take months, not weeks to clear out. "I want to prepare Kalistanis especially, but also our partners in western Dovani and Northern Seleya that this will be a medium term problem that we project will take us until August or September to clear. This means delays in the Just In Time system that our economy is fine tuned for. We are asking the Government to work with producers in Kalistan to reduce production until we can get this back log cleared, so it doesn't have ripple effects through our economy."

Caballo estimated that more than ₭4.6 Billion Rubles of commerce is stuck in Sulari. We usually manage less than ₭3.1 Billion Rubles worth of cargo during normal shipping cycles," said Caballo. "This represents a back log of more than 50% over our normal capacity, and right now we are pretty close to full. We've ordered our container factory to cease production on shipping containers because we really don't have a lot of places to put them right now. And we have shifted resources to production where we are laying in a new Supermax container ship on the North Yard. That ship won't be built for another year and a half, but meanwhile we are going to be running our ships between here and Lourenne, Egelion, Dolgava, and Gaduri non stop for the next several months."

While Caballo is optimistic that the backlog will be cleared within a half a year, he is also hopeful that the Trans Seleyan Rail reopens at Lucid City. "Having that overland link dramatically improved shipping efficiency, especially for smaller or local orders," said Caballo. "When the door slammed shut, it was like putting a car in reverse as you are travelling down the road at 70 miles an hour. The sooner Her Imperial Majesty orders that border reopened, the sooner we will get this stuff out of here, and onto its home. I get what she's doing, but keeping that railroad closed hurts our economy."

Caballo also acknowledged Istalian incursion into the region. "Kalistan outcompetes those foreigners all day every day: we move at scale. But forcing everything from and to Mainland Kalistan to go through Sulari gives Istalia advantages in the market. We'll clear this backlog long before Istalia catches up to Kalistan, but the longer that railroad crossing remains closed, the more progress they will make catching up with us. Right now, they aren't a threat to our long established advantages, but keep the border closed for 15 years and I definitely won't be able to say that anymore."

Prices on imports have already slipped upward by about 2%, though strenuous price caps have been imposed that should ease some pressure. "We are at the point where we are profitable, but we're now getting about 15% of our middle subsidized by the Minister of Trade," said Caballo. "For a private corporation, that's a first for us." SSC stock prices remained stable in the KalSiE, thanks to the temporary subsidies.

@TheRepublic