Gauteng’s clogged arteries hamper export growth

The supply chain in and out of the country’s main trade hub of Gauteng is growing old and creaky – with this year’s Transnet strike highlighting just how quickly this artery gets blocked up. When the railways ground to a three-week halt as Transnet Freight Rail (TFR) workers downed tools along with those from all the other subsidiaries of the parastatal transport group, the City Deep inland harbour was soon clogged up with full and empty boxes. It was a disease that very quickly spread to all the other Gauteng container facilities and down the line to the major port of Durban – which already had its own poststrike backlog of boxes. And there was an obviously weak link in the supply chain, one that had already seen SA Revenue Service (Sars) customs raising the red warning flag. In a largely ignored paragraph printed in the draft Customs Control Bill, Sars had recommended to government that City Deep in Johannesburg be downgraded from being an “inland port” to just a container terminal. And the reason for this, according to Pat Corbin, transport specialist at the Johannesburg Chamber of Commerce and Industry (JCCI), was that there was no room for the urgently needed expansion of City Deep. Over the years the city expansion in Johannesburg had slowly enveloped all the free space round the inland port, and suddenly it found itself strangled by the rapidly growing influx of import containers. Facilities at the inland port and the private container depots just could not cope as the incoming flow of 40-foot (12-metre) containers into Gauteng continued week by week. It was caused by a major imbalance in incoming and outgoing boxes, David Williams, MD of the major sea carrier, Maersk Line, told FTW. “This because it’s SA’s peak import season, and more 40-fts were just pouring into the country – far faster than empty boxes could be moved out.” The City Deep situation was also putting paid to a lot of SA exporters’ activities, according to Roger Phillip of Deutsche Afrika Linien (DAL). “When the terminal became utterly congested, it even had to close for exports until it got some of the mess cleared up,” he said. “And even after that the inland port was not accepting any empties for rail out of Johannesburg.” A situation, Phillip added, which was exacerbating the already glaring shortage of boxes for exports out of the Far East. This immediately saw all the lines getting into a huddle with TFR to try to plan out a method of overcoming the problem. “But,” said Williams, “this is only aimed at the long-term solution, as there is just no short-term answer.” And the probable solution has already been put before parliament in Transnet’s recent presentation of its transport master plan, according to Dr Willie Els, of the development company, Inframax Holdings, which has plans for a new billion rand inland port on a 630-hectare site south of Johannesburg. This Tambo Springs development was one of three highlighted to parliament by Transnet – joining other proposed schemes at Centre Rand, north-east of Johannesburg and Pyramid, north of Tshwane. It also confirmed the original thinking at Inframax, where it saw the other developments intended to be supplementary to City Deep. “It still has a role to play,” Els told FTW. “But the time has come to have it operating in tandem with a larger inland port or ports located on the new city periphery and able to accommodate a large, efficient, intermodal capability for road, rail and air transport. “This is fundamental to any 21st century freight operation.” These proposed logistics gateways are designed to help meet Gauteng’s need to increase the current capacity in and out of Johannesburg to 3-million TEUs by 2015 and 4-m by 2020.