Global growth puts South African ports in the shade

PERHAPS THE SA port authorities should not boast too much about how they are growing the throughput in the SA port system each year, according to Captain Roy Martin, MD of Admiralty Shipsales, and president of the Master Mariners executive committee. At about 8% growth each year, possibly all that is being achieved is a growing SA reputation for port congestion – as SA ports slip lower each year in the international container league. Using Containerisation International Yearbook figures, Martin ranked the world’s top 10 countries in terms of volumes of container traffic in 2005 as: China, USA, Singapore, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Germany, Malaysia, Italy and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). “SA was listed at 24th (with 2 675 342-teus) in 2004,” he said, “but had slipped to 26th in 2005 - with 2 867 909-teus.” In the world container port league, Durban came in at number 50 with 1 716 700 TEUs in 2004, but did not even feature in the top 50 in 2005 – sliding well down in the top 100. The fact that container throughput for the whole SA commercial port system (seven ports) grew by about 60% between 2000 and 2006 is also not too significant when compared to other growth rates around the world, Martin added. In those six years, Shanghai – just one of China’s container port systems – saw throughput jump by over 222% – from 5.61-million teus in 2000, to 18.09-m teus in 2006. Another single port, Hamburg in Germany, recorded a throughput increase of 89.6% – from 4.25-m to 8.06-m; while Dubai in the UAE boasted a growth of almost 151% – from 3.06-m to 7.68-m. “And they are handling these massive increases without a qualm,” Martin said.