Latest news with #dockworkers
BBC News
18-05-2025
- Entertainment
- BBC News
Felixstowe dock worker stories wanted to help inspire new play
A producer and playwright is looking for stories of dock workers to help bring a new theatre show to Goddard is working to find anyone who has worked at the Port of Felixstowe in Suffolk over the decades for a play called Don't Knock The play has been supported by Arts Council England, the county council and Eastern Angles and follows the lives of two 16-year-old friends who leave school and go on to work on the Goddard, who grew up in the town, said the play would celebrate stories of the workers over the years. "I know a lot of people who left school and went to work down the dock," she explained."It was the local industry, that's where people went."If we'd been living in a coal mining area they might have gone down the mines... it just happened to be the local place where everyone went to work."I've always thought that people don't really know enough of what goes on down there."But also I think those stories haven't been celebrated and there are so many people that work down there." Mrs Goddard and the team are predominantly looking for those who worked on the docks in the 1980s, but they were keen to hear from other decades well as this she stressed they wanted all types of workers to come forward including women whom she felt were important to include."I need more [stories]," she added."It doesn't have to be from the port perspective, it's anybody who worked down the dock, so that could be a shipping company, or a haulage company, a lorry driver, or people who worked in the other departments like the canteen, the firefighters, the police." Mrs Goddard has already begun collating stories and said there had been an "overriding theme of a sense of comradery" between the workers."Overwhelmingly they say they wouldn't have missed it for the world and they made such good friends," she continued."There's a lot of funny banter you get surrounding it, it's been really fun so far."Once the stories have been compiled the team, including director Ollie Harrington and sound designer Jack Baxter, will use these to draft the will then be two public script readings where people will be able to give feedback before the play will then hopefully be put on tour. Follow Suffolk news on BBC Sounds, Facebook, Instagram and X.
Forbes
14-05-2025
- Science
- Forbes
AI In Maritime: Top Practical Implementations
With all of the progress AI enables in maritime, will it ultimately replace professional ship designers, architects, welders, dockworkers and other specialists?
Fast Company
13-05-2025
- Business
- Fast Company
Why a Brazilian pulp exporter is raising fears of another toilet paper shortage
Everyone has their individual bad memories of the pandemic, but one collective nightmare of the early days of that miserable period is the struggle to find toilet paper at the local store. Now, tariffs are bringing concerns about a toilet paper shortage back to the forefront. Suzano SA is the world's largest exporter of pulp, the raw material for products like toilet paper. And the company tells Bloomberg it has seen shipments decline from Brazil to the U.S. due to tariffs and worries the shipping disruptions could get worse. It is, to be clear, much too early to know what the impact of pulp shipping disruptions will be. The company said shipments were down 20% in April and stores, at present, are well stocked. But tariffs could result in higher prices for consumers, which could lead to a rush by some people to stock up. A similar scenario happened last October when a strike by dock workers on the East Coast sent shoppers flocking to stores, emptying shelves of necessities, including toilet paper. Toilet paper and paper towels are largely produced in the U.S. (Just 10% of the country's toilet paper is imported.) But the pulp used to make them is imported from countries like Brazil and Canada (which sends northern bleached softwood kraft pulp our way). It doesn't take an actual shortage to empty store shelves. Just growing talk of one can cause short term disruptions to the supply chain. Put another way: there's a snowball effect. If a small number of people panic shop, that drives others to do so as well. So if shoppers notice there's less toilet paper on the shelves than usual, they're more likely to stock up just in case, due to recent talk of empty ports and looming product shortages. Suzano is still shipping products to the U.S., but not only is it shipping less, it's charging more. The company says it is passing on the cost of tariffs to U.S. buyers, which could be part of the reason for the smaller orders. 'Since customers are still struggling to forecast how tariffs can affect their production plants, either directly or indirectly, both pulp buyers and sellers are on a price discovery mode as we speak,' Leo Grimaldi, executive vice president at Suzano said on a recent call with analysts. 'There is not clarity yet of what is this price point needed for a full establishment of market confidence and dynamics.' Like the dock worker's strike last year, the trade war was something that was clearly telegraphed by the White House. That gave manufacturers like Kimberly-Clark and Georgia-Pacific time to stockpile pulp to keep retail prices level. Should a herd mentality lead to product shortages, however, that could lead to store managers putting buying limits on popular items. (The danger of that is by limiting what you can buy, it could drive people who were not planning on buying any to join in on the hoarding.) Americans certainly love their toilet paper (which is somewhat ironic, as it didn't become a household staple until the 1940s). At the start of the pandemic, when the panic buying was in full effect, Americans spent $1.4 billion on toilet paper over a four week period in March/April of 2020, according to retail sales tracker IRI. That was a 102% increase from the same period a year before, which led to a widespread toilet paper shortage. We're not alone. In Hong Kong after the pandemic got underway, armed robbers held up a supermarket. They weren't interested in the cash registers. They did, however, take 600 rolls of toilet paper.
