Dig out port could be Durban’s only option

TERRY HUTSON
THE NATIONAL Ports Authority has some innovative plans to increase Durban’s container capacity – a dig out port. However, this will not be at the Durban airport site but instead at Bayhead to the immediate southwest of the harbour. It’s not exactly a new idea, but gradually the realisation has come about that this is Durban’s only real choice, particularly after the engineers declared the filling in of water near Salisbury Island was not suitable. The area now likely to become Durban’s third and fourth container terminal lies in an area that was historically the flood plain of several rivers flowing into Durban Bay – the Umbilo and Umhlatuzana included. In living memory much of this area has been a swampland that flooded regularly, so it makes perfect sense for the port to expand in this direction. “We haven’t totally ruled out the airport site but that is now increasingly unlikely. The Bayhead dig-out looks the more promising and is in fact the cheapest option,” says Basil Ndlovu, Durban’s port manager. “We therefore believe we have to explore this if Durban is to grow as a port, although all the necessary environmental studies must be undertaken first.” The advantage coming with the Bayhead site is that it is land already ‘owned’ by Transnet and will add more water area to Durban Bay – always an important aspect among environmentalist bodies. One of the main criticisms of previous ‘extensions’ to the port is that they filled in large areas of waterway in Durban Bay resulting in Durban Bay being steadily reduced in size. The Bayhead proposal not only reverses this process but will provide for two large container terminals on either side of a new channel. There would also be space for either a large car terminal or for breakbulk and bulk cargo handling, or both. The negative of this plan is that it intrudes into ship repair area, but the NPA believes the answer to that problem would be for ship repair (and shipbuilding) to migrate to Richards Bay. If the dig-out option does happen then Bayhead Road will be diverted by way of a tunnel beneath the new channel. Railway marshalling would not be severely affected. What the plan does provide is to make it possible for Durban to retain its important role as the nearest major container port to Gauteng and the KZN industrial zones. Equally important the new terminal could cater for the largest size ship likely to call in South Africa, courtesy of the by then already widened and deepened entrance channel. The container terminals would have eight berths and a declared capacity of 2.8m TEU, although this number appears extremely conservative and if RTGs were employed the capacity would more likely be more than double that.