Persistent cargo delays at South Africa’s ports have forced freight forwarders to pull out the necessary stops in buffering shippers against related cost impacts, notably detention and demurrage.
According to Claudia Swanepoel, head of sales and customer service at Heneways, the Port of Cape Town has been particularly prone to “cargo simply not moving”.
In recent times the port has been battling to bounce back from weather-bound incidents, as reported by the weekly Cargo Movement Updates compiled by Business Unity SA and the South African Association of Freight Forwarders.
“We have customers bringing transformers into Cape Town and waiting for two to three weeks to get their equipment through the port,” said Swanepoel.
The resulting penalties that agents have to pass on to clients because of carrier costs, have forced Heneways to constantly assess which of the country’s underperforming ports has the best throughput.
“We have a customer right now who’s looking to export to Europe, ideally wanting to go the Cape Town route because it’s a shorter rotation to Rotterdam.
“But we have advised against it because of the issues experienced at Cape Town. We’re suggesting that he ships out of Durban. Although it’s a longer trip, the likelihood is his goods will leave sooner than if he were to use Cape Town.”
Ultimately, though, there’s no perfect situation at the country’s ports – far from it.
“We have so many clients that are on prepaid terms and hitting demurrage because, by the time they’re able to collect their containers, they’ve already started racking up penalties.”
Last year in the run-up to the online shopping frenzy of Black Friday, a client waiting for 18 containers completely missed out on the potential of coffee machine sales through Takealot because of congestion at the Port of Durban.
The cargo had eventually been received in February, said Swanepoel.
To buffer clients against possible port impacts, Heneways has several mitigating facilities and services in place, such as a 24 000-sqm warehouse serviced by dedicated harbour carriers that can collect containers between one and five in the morning when land-side road freight congestion has ebbed.
When it works, it works well, the company says, offering clients a 10-minute-or-less rotation service from Durban Container Terminal to Heneways’ storage facility.
“We have to do whatever we can to protect our clients against penalties,” Swanepoel said.
“Carriers simply pass on the charges. We have about four people in Durban just focusing on mitigating detention and demurrage on behalf of our clients. We’re constantly looking at ocean rates, the exchange rate and how we can drive down cost.”
