Containers gain ground in ding dong battle

RAY SMUTS THAT CAPE Town’s container terminal is intent on capturing a larger slice of the perishable export pie is evident from measures in place to ensure more customers are won - and retained. Specialised reefer operators who ship palletised reefer cargo underdeck and a smaller volume of containers on deck - the likes of LauritzenCool and Seatrade - maintain their mode is superior, while the container sector has a different view, pointing for instance to less handling of the product as a distinct advantage. Whatever the case for or against, there is largely consensus that the balance will ultimately even out at around 50/50, this despite non-existent reefer newbuilds versus hundreds of orders for new container ships set to explode with a frenzy of launchings in 2006. Oscar Borchards, business unit manager at the Mother City container terminal, is hopeful the Transnet board will approve an additional 550 reefer plug points before the end of this year, bringing the total to 2 000 to cater for the 2004/5 fruit season. Until that becomes reality, he believes the terminal is unable to satisfy the heavy demand on reefer plug points. “The answer is to manage the demand by means of an intake management system based on capacity versus demand as experienced on a daily basis. “The short-term plan is to increase to 2000 reefer plug points and the medium to long-term plan to grow to 3 400 points, to be constructed as part of the new land reclamation along the Milnerton side of the container terminal.” That containers are winning favour over conventional is illustrated by South African Port Operations (Sapo) statistics which have it that a total fruit mix of 584 000 pallets (both TEU and FEU) was shipped in containers last year as opposed to 426 778 pallets by conventional reefer mode. The total export fruit throughput thus far for 2004 is 528 98l pallets of which conventional reefer accounts for 233 833 pallets. Sapo’s Cape Town key accounts manager Richard van Schalkwyk says from the start of 2002 to date the total number of fruit pallets shipped is 2,592 million of which conventional reefer accounted for 1,130 million pallets. That gives 56% to containers and 43,6% to conventional, so clearly containerisation is gaining ground,” he said.