In a big boost to business confidence, shipping giant Maersk says congestion at the key Durban port has decreased, confirming what Transnet Port Terminals (TPT) said a week ago.
However, Maersk which carries much of SA’s imports and exports, said little headway is being made at the Port of Cape Town.
“We have seen an improvement in the Durban depot situation, however, we continue to experience space challenges in Cape Town ... as a result of the improvement in Durban, future updates will be focused on Cape Town Depot turn-in options,” Maersk said in an advisory note to clients.
TPT last week said the Durban Container Terminal Pier 2 has reduced its vessel backlog at anchor to five.
The progress in clearing congestion at the Durban port reported by Maersk suggests the turnaround plans announced by TPT in November are starting to bear fruit.
The state-owned entity said at the time that plans were afoot to improve Durban Container Terminal Pier 2’s performance by increasing the number of containers cleared per day from 2,500 to 4,000 over three months, and from 1,200 to 1,500 containers per day for Pier 1.
Pier 2 is SA’s busiest container terminal and one of the leading terminals in the southern hemisphere.
The terminal is on the verge of welcoming a private sector partner in the form of Philippines-based International Container Terminal Services Inc (ICTSI), a partnership that is expected to come into effect in April.
The key Durban port has seen better days and was ranked as the 63rd best container terminal worldwide six years ago.
However, after years of operational decay, the terminal ranked a lowly 341 out of 348 ports and terminals, as measured by the World Bank and S&P Global Market Intelligence’s 2022 container port performance index.
Private sector
Congestion at the Durban port came to a head in the last months of 2023 with ships at some point waiting two weeks to dock and 70,000 shipping containers stranded on ships off Durban.
Business Day first reported on the challenges besieging the Port of Cape Town and calls by the provincial government to bring in the private sector to assist.
One of the challenges at the Port of Cape Town has been a lack of rubber-tyred gantries (RTGs) and their engines. RTGs are machines designed to load and unload containers.
According to the equipment improvement plan dated October 11, seven used RTGs were bought from the US.
TPT in its latest update last week said the seven rubber-tyred gantry cranes that the Cape Town Container Terminal “recently took receipt of, are in the process of being commissioned and employees are undergoing training”.
In the World Bank’s container port performance index 2022, Cape Town ranked 344 out of the 348 ports surveyed and was in the top 20 that most increased average arrival times.
A port benchmarking report by the Ports Regulator of SA reads ships spent the most time waiting at anchorage to enter the Port of Cape Town of all SA terminals.
TPT is a division of Transnet, which owns and operates 16 terminal operations situated across seven SA ports.
Operations are divided into major market sectors, namely containers, bulk, break bulk and automotive and organised into three geographical regions — Eastern Cape, Western Cape and KwaZulu-Natal.
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