Playing the blame game against Table Bay’s stormy conditions was not an excuse for persistent berthing and vessel-working delays experienced at the Port of Cape Town, said logistics executive Mike Walwyn.
In a frank discussion with Freight News about the windbound port’s underperformance, the consultant with the South African Association of Freight Forwarders (Saaff), said it was important to look at Cape Town’s metrics – moves per Gross Crane Hours (GCH) and Ship Working Hours (SWH).
In both instances, he stressed, the port’s operational functioning was simply not what it should be.
“At the moment they are sitting at about 16 to 17 GCH and about 33 to 34 SWH. These are relatively low figures. Ideally, if it works properly, GCH should be above 20 and SWH should be above 40.”
Walwyn is however more concerned about a different kind of ‘metric’ which he refers to as PPE – people, productivity, equipment.
Asked whether problems experienced at the port are not perhaps related to management seeking ordinary solutions to extraordinary challenges, he said it was an issue.
“Under previous management Cape Town managed to work in winds of up to 80 kilometres an hour. If the wind blew briefly they made the crane driver stay up there in the hope that it would stop soon.”
It must be remembered, Walwyn said, that it took an hour to take a crane driver off and put him back on again.
What doesn’t make sense in terms of working hours lost, is the port having rubber-tyred gantry cranes (RTGs) and straddle carriers that can work in wind of up to 90kms an hour.
“But last week we had 14 out of 28 RTGs operating because they had a problem with pumping the tyres. We had trucking companies in the port that offered to pump the tyres for them but port management said it had to be put out to tender. So yes, management is an issue at the moment.”
Admittedly, staff safety was an important issue, Walwyn said.
Ship-to-shore cranes, for example, should not be manned by anyone in winds of 75kms or more.
Apart from complaints that personnel are perhaps not managed as well as they could be, taking proper care of equipment at executive level is also a concern.
“There are consistent and regular breakdowns at the port, and my view is it’s because of not having scheduled maintenance. Management complains about old equipment that needs replacing.
“But they should know that when you buy equipment you should know what its design life is and when it needs replacing. You should know what its maintenance schedule should be so you can plan your capital expenditure to coincide with the end of the design life. That is a constant and ongoing process of running a port. It is not a valid excuse to say the stuff is old and broken.”
Ultimately it boiled down to the ability to bounce back from weather-related disruption, and the Port of Cape Town seemed to have lost the ability to effectively deal with that, Walwyn argued.
“It doesn’t help to get agitated about the wind. It’s how we respond that matters.”