Better but still nowhere near perfect

That’s the consensus of a number of freight industry people when questioned by FTW about the state-of-play at the City Deep inland port – which was completely shut down by the Transnet strike earlier this year, and has been struggling to succeed at its catch-up game. When queried about the City Deep predicament, one freight industry source said: “Transnet Freight Rail (TFR) is moving slower than its trains.” That referred to the post-strike efforts of the container depot operators. He added that there were still just too many frustrations – like certain railway lines being closed for various reasons; sluggish movement of boxes in and out of the depot; and a continuing inability to move empty boxes out of City Deep by rail. However, he did suggest that the general feeling was that things were improving – certainly better than the disastrous period immediately after the Transnet strike. “There was a forum meeting in Johannesburg last week,” he told FTW, “and the consensus was that the new booking system was working – and things were on the up-and-up.” An e-mail to FTW last week from Ron Frick, MD of Deutsche Afrika Linien (DAL) in SA, suggested that the lines were still not happy with the performance at City Deep. The inability to shift empty boxes by rail out of the depot has been proving a major problem for the lines. Trucking them back to the port city of Durban was just not financially sound. And this one unsatisfactory link was reflecting adversely on the cost-efficiency of the whole seafreight supply chain. This immediately saw all the lines getting into a huddle with TFR to try to plan a method of overcoming the problem. “But,” said David Williams, SA MD of Maersk Line, “this is only aimed at the long-term solution, as there is just no short-term answer.” Ernest Govender of Bridgeport is happy that his company has its own connection from its siding in Johannesburg to the Bridgeport siding in Durban. This allows it to sidestep the problems of the TFR rail line on the country’s main trade link. And Bridgeport has also been acting as a helping hand for the lines in their problem with moving empty boxes. “We have been transporting these on our own Johannesburg-Durban line,” he told FTW, “and doing everything else we can to assist TFR.” Georgi Georgiev of Grindrod Intermodal, is another who feels that things are better than before at City Deep but it still needs more TFR attention before it gets up to par. “If TFR doesn’t invest in handling equipment it’s not going to improve that much,” he said. “Because of this inadequacy I think the present problem will persist for the next three to four months.” But will City Deep ever meet the demands being made on it? Definitely not, if you believe Pat Corbin, transport specialist at the Johannesburg Chamber of Commerce and Industry. The SA Revenue Service customs has already noted this obviously weak link in the seafreight supply chain in and out of SA, and has raised the red warning flag at parliamentary level. In a largely ignored paragraph printed in the draft Customs Control Bill at the beginning of this year, Sars recommended to government that City Deep be downgraded from being an “inland port” to just a container terminal. This was also included in Transnet’s Master Plan put before parliament, suggesting that new inland port developments would be encouraged. And the reason for this, according to Corbin, was that there was no room for the urgently needed expansion of City Deep. Over the years the city expansion in Johannesburg had slowly enveloped all the free space round the inland port, and it suddenly found itself strangled by the rapidly growing influx of import containers.