The eThekwini Municipality is planning a second access road to the Port of Durban to alleviate traffic congestion outside the port.
The municipality last week approved a R50 million environmental impact assessment (EIA) study to construct a second access road outside the badly congested port, according to the South African Association of Freight Forwarders and Business Unity South Africa.
“Improved access to the port will hopefully improve the throughput levels, as it is important to consider the synchromodal need to satisfy South Africa’s high freight demand. And the additional access points will undoubtedly help,” said the organisations in their latest cargo movement update.
“The single access road to the Island View complex and container terminals are not only a major cause of ongoing congestion, impacting various logistics-related operations in the South Durban precinct,but it also presents a potential for major disruption, as was evidenced in the 2021 floods, where one lane of Bayhead Road was washed away,” according to the update.
However, cargo movement for both port volumes and air cargo showed slight improvements last week compared to the week before, despite some operational disruptions.
South African ports handled a total of 62 149 containers (32 009 for import and 30 140 for export) in the week up to July 26, which is 7% more than the 58 637 (27 327 for import and 31 310 for export) the week before. The daily average was 8878, and 9069 is the number predicted for this week.
“Union meetings and rainy weather caused some operational delays in Cape Town last week, while equipment breakdowns and sounding operations constituted the majority of delays in Durban,” said the report.
“Agent delays and adverse weather mainly constrained operations in the Eastern Cape. At the same time, the Port of Richards Bay experienced some operational delays due to the pilot boat being out of commission. Spillage on the Maersk Valencia also caused extensive delays at the Port of Port Elizabeth this week. Conversely, no major incidents disrupted rail operations on the container corridor.”
Air cargo handling increased by 6% from 5872 tonnes to 6207 tonnes last week, of which 3941 was for import and 2266 for export.
