Durban congestion hits CT schedule reliability

Lack of service reliability is putting Cape Town exporters under pressure as congestion at other ports throws schedules out of kilter. According to Terry Gale, chairman of the Exporters Club Western Cape, a recent incident involved a vessel en-route to the United
States. It bypassed Durban due to congestion issues and arrived in Cape Town earlier than scheduled. “The exporter in question had more than ten containers booked on the vessel and was very nearly not able to deliver which would have compromised his contract with the importer
in the US,” said Gale. With the stack opening on the Monday and due to close on the Thursday, the move to cut off the Shipping Instruction (SI) at 10am on Tuesday meant all the containers had to be in the stack by that date, cutting the time to deliver to the port by more than half.
Gale said while it was the job of the freight forwarder to handle issues like these for the exporter, it was not always possible. “These kinds of issues reflect negatively on our export capability as a province and a country and we simply cannot afford to lose a single export,” he said.