Citrus growers revive grand plan

The Citrus Growers’ Association has taken its grand plan for the establishment of an integrated transport management system (ITMS) to Transnet after initial efforts stuttered to a halt. ITMS would involve a central co-ordinating and communication function (run for all cold stores) and a designated area for the collective staging of trucks, said CGA logistics development manager, Mitchell Brooke. “The logic behind the scheme was that citrus exports through the Port of Durban had shown growth of 50% in eight years, and congestion was a major challenge,” he said. Some 100% of citrus deliveries in Durban are on road trucks. “But trucking citrus into Durban has developed a negative stigma in the transport industry – with damages and delays,” he added. “And Aarto rules include a demerit system that will affect truckers harshly for road offences like overloading and front gate parking because of the congestion.” He sees this as a longterm issue, and one that requires proper management going forward – and this is where ITMS comes in. “Industry needs to act on this and manage it collectively,” Brooke said. “If not, it would have ramifications for everybody in the supply chain.” But, while the scheme had everything going for it, actually implementing it was the problem that eventually slammed the brakes on it. “What we did,” Brooke told FTW, “was to establish the facilities in the Port of Durban, because that was the area where we needed to enact the whole system.” But the CGA was unable to launch it from an association point of view, and this had to be left to the cold store domain. At the meeting where the idea of the ITMS was originally presented to the Citrus Logistics Forum (CLF) members, the cold stores management indicated that they would be happy to see the system introduced and would help to pay for it, Brooke told FTW. But, when it came to the crunch, the payment issue just couldn’t be settled. “The cold store domain,” he said, “is very competitive, and this issue was impossible for them to reach agreement on.” So this approach, in turn, just had to be left on the backburner. But the scheme has such merit that Brooke and the CGA are intent on seeing its adoption in the Port of Durban, which is why they have approached Transnet. “We are discussing the fact that there is a bottleneck at the facilities in the port, and hope that we can reach an agreement for them to introduce this integrated system,” said Brooke. He pointed to specific factors that cause delays to trucks entering Durban. One is that cold stores are located in industrial zones, like the Point, Maydon Wharf, Congella and Isipingo, a zoning affected by greater industry at large. Also, the arrival of citrus trucks is generally far greater than the throughput time to off load trucks because of the bottlenecks, with container trucks fighting with farm trucks as they look for a spot to off load/ load citrus at the depots – and making it literally a free-for-all. An integrated system, Brooke insisted, would overcome this melee of trucks INSERT When it came to the crunch, the payment issue just couldn’t be settled.