Terry Hutson
DELAYS OF up to 24 hours and more at the Durban container terminal had eased as this issue went to press on Monday morning.
Portnet blamed this latest congestion on a reduced availability of straddle carriers due to equipment failure, plus a labour dispute involving work gangs at the terminal.
The labour dispute reportedly lasted a matter of hours and was quickly settled. Additional technicians were deployed in an effort to increase the service frequency of the ageing straddle carrier fleet.
However, several ship operators told FTW that they were unhappy with the delays, which had left them with lots of disgruntled customers.
"Transit time, especially on the coastal service where the shipping lines have to fight ferociously for market share against road transport, is critical and vessel delays are simply not acceptable. We appreciate that Portnet is doing its best to get things back on line but the problem is that they're trying to operate a modern port with defunct equipment," said one shipping line.
The chairman of the Association of Shipping Lines, Alan Rolfe, agreed with reports that much of the equipment at the Durban terminal was experiencing technical problems. He said that in particular the older gantry cranes in service at berth 109 and many of the straddle carriers were well past their sell-by date.
Portnet has a number of new straddle carriers on order, but these are due to
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begin arriving in Durban from October.
According to Portnet's general manager of the Durban container terminal, Themba Gwala, the congestion was aggravated by high container volumes for June, which saw a throughput of 78 895 containers. Initially this figure was quoted as being the "highest volume ever handled by the terminal in one month", but on being queried by FTW was later down-rated to "fairly high volumes".
"One of the major problems that we are dealing with is the quay wall (200) that has sunk and is presently under repairs. This has reduced our berthing capacity by one berth."
Gwala added that overbooking of vessels and the subsequent amendment to other vessels was creating additional non-productive moves. He expected the situation to have improved by the end of the week, he said.
"SA Port Operations apologise profusely to our clients in particular and the industry at large for the inconvenience."
