CT terminal hit by three-pronged assault

THE HANGOVER of the fierce storm two weeks ago, Eskom power outages and faulty equipment all had a hand in considerable delays at Cape Town Container Terminal last week. The situation, says one liner container shipping official, was “quite catastrophic” – power outages of some 11 hours on one day, more the next. The terminal’s daily report for September 5 reveals crane number 2 was out of commission for 32 hours and crane number 6 for 12 hours – and with berth 600/601 under construction, quay 700 was again utilised for derrick operations. (The cranes were back in operation the afternoon of September 5). Mike Powles, planning manager at the container terminal, told FTW the outage was “unscheduled” but nevertheless led to an effective 25-hour loss on Tuesday and Wednesday when a new cable being installed at a Salt River point feeding the terminal and other port areas caught fire and had to be replaced. Powles says average operational hours lost last week were of the order of 50 hours, given the combined complications of weather, power outages and equipment breakdowns. Some vessels were however affected considerably more than 50 hours. In the case of MSC Africa, a transhipment vessel engaged in the West Africa trade, she was moved by mutual agreement between her operators and the authorities to the Eastern Mole to await export boxes after discharging her cargo in the terminal. While the resulting delays were not of the terminal’s making, they amounted to 156.58 hours. Safmarine Nyasa, which arrived without prior Sars clearance on August 30 and was only due to berth on September 5, was delayed for 138.35 hours, MSC Lavinia (around 96 hours), MSC Catania (about 72 hours), MSC Roberta (about 60 hours) MSC France (about 36 hours) and MSC Los Angeles (some 30 hours). Sixteen vessels were expected in the eight days to September 10, to discharge 4 649 import containers and load 5 113 export boxes, the terminal’s daily average pegged at 1 220.