Giant container ship calls at Durban

WHO NEEDS Coega? That’s what some port users are saying after the largest ever container ship safely entered Durban harbour and loaded over 5 000 containers in one shot. Admittedly they were mostly empties for repositioning in South East Asia but the point was that the ship, MSC Tokyo, is a 6 000-teu capacity vessel, 275m in length and with a beam of 40m – the very size that some experts said was too large ever to be contemplated for Durban. Therefore the argument was let’s build a container terminal at Coega (port of Ngqura). MSC Tokyo was brought into MSC’s Cheetah Service as a stop-gap for another ship that had been delayed through port congestion elsewhere – despite being the world’s second largest container carrier, MSC still has the flexibility to make such adjustments at short notice. Interestingly, as MSC Tokyo sailed from Durban she crossed within the harbour itself with another company ship, MSC Benedetta. When she entered service in 2006 she was, along with three sister ships, the largest container ship at 5 000-teus to enter service to South Africa. Bearing in mind that the port entrance at Durban is currently being widened and deepened, it is safe to predict that the recent visit by a 6 000-teu vessel is not going to be an isolated event. It's another reason for Transnet to stop procrastinating and make up its mind about creating additional terminal facilities at Durban for these massive ships. Common sense dictates that this should be in Durban – the port has just shown it can handle them.