The Western Cape provincial government is concerned about the “worryingly slow pace” at which the Cape Town port management is implementing its terminal turnaround strategy.
This is despite recent improvements in ship turnaround times at the port, which came too late to assist the apple and pear industry during the peak winter export season.
Provincial minister of agriculture, economic development and tourism Ivan Meyer said the slow pace of improvement had direct cost implications for the agricultural sector in the Western Cape.
“The Western Cape government’s growth for jobs strategy sets out our ambitious plan to grow the Western Cape economy by 5% annually by 2035. We aim to triple the value of the province’s exports of goods and services (inclusive of tourism) by 2035 to R450bn.
“To achieve this, we need an efficient port. Productivity at the port of Cape Town must significantly improve in the lead-up to the upcoming fruit export season if we are to achieve this goal,” Meyer said in a statement.
He said he was told by Two-a-Day (TAD) fruit company’s MD Attie van Zyl that the estimated total cost of inefficiencies at the port to the provincial apple and pear industry was R999m annually.
“Our apple and pear growers are directly impacted. The total estimated cost of a dysfunctional port per hectare for our farmers is R26,000 per hectare,” Van Zyl told Meyer. He told Business Day that that was the cost for 2024. Any recent improvement in the port’s performance would not have affected this figure as 90% of exports had already taken place, he said.
TAD, previously known as Elgin Fruit Packers Co-operative comprises more than 50 farms and 3,300ha. Total production, including processing, equates to more than 200,000 tonnes per year.
Van Zyl explained that any improvement in port performance would have to be sustained over a long period of time for shipping lines to allocate more ships to the Cape Town route, which was needed to expedite exports. Fewer ships affected exports and export markets.
Western Cape premier Alan Winde noted that while the cost to the industry of port inefficiencies was deeply worrying, “it does not show the full extent of the loss to the agriculture sector because we are not calculating the opportunities lost of growing into new markets. We are not seen as a reliable supplier to the international market because we cannot guarantee delivery.”
Glen Steyn, the Western Cape department of economic development and tourism’s project manager for logistics development, said the department had been working closely with the management team of Transnet Port Authority and Transnet Port Terminals in the Western region.
The World Bank Container Port Performance 2023 ranked Cape Town port last of the 405 ports surveyed. It measures vessel turnaround time or the time a ship spends in port with the global best practice average being two days. The average for Cape Town until the end of 2023 was about eight days. This was reduced to an average this year of about six days but recently has improved to just over four days which, if sustained, is good news for the table grape industry, which begins its exports at the end of November.
The port’s terminal turnaround strategy has contributed to the improvement in vessel turnaround times. The strategy involves an improvement in a range of activities undertaken at the container terminal as well as the acquisition of new equipment.
Citrus Growers Association of Southern Africa logistics development manager Mitchell Brook highlighted the problem of the high winds which affect the performance of the Cape Town port, particularly over the November, December and January period which is high season for the deciduous fruit industry.
“High wind speeds and high swells across our ports system (due to climate change) is starting to have a real impact on port operation abilities. If it starts to become more progressive it is going to have a very, very serious impact on our industry's ability to export,” Brook said.
“We have spoken to [transport minister Barbara Creecy] — in fact we had a meeting with her on Tuesday — and have also spoken to Transnet about the need to start to have very strong contingencies against wind and weather impacts on the ports operation abilities.”
Brook said this would require ports to become a lot more productive so that work could be done quickly when there was no wind. New generation equipment could also help.
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