Covid-19 testing delays and related congestion triggers experienced on the Lebombo-Ressano Garcia border between South Africa and Mozambique are jeopardising a shipment of 33 000 tonnes of grain destined for Kenya, an agricultural supply chain service provider has told Freight News.
According to an operations manager for the Swiss-based company, who requested that names and branding be withheld, they started shipping grain from various silos around Mpumalanga on the 15th of June and by now at least 15 000 tonnes should have arrived at the Port of Maputo.
“Instead we’re sitting on about 10 000 tonnes, definitely short of where we should be.
“At the current rate of affected truck turnaround times,” he added, “we will be lucky if we have 20 000 tonnes in Matola ready to be loaded by the time the vessel arrives sometime between the 14th and 17th of this month.”
Should that be the case, which the manager fears it will be, his employer could face a demurrage bill of around $13 000 as the vessels wait to receive their full load from the shipper.
“It’s a very difficult situation we find ourselves in. We should be getting about 150 to 200 trucks through the border and back - but at the moment we’re only managing about 85 to 100.”
As a result of the border delays, for the most part caused by authorities painstakingly ensuring that the coronavirus is contained, transporters are hiking their rates because of the extra time their trucks are spending on the shipment.
“They are passing their costs onto us but we can’t pass our costs onto anyone. We can’t hike the price that we gave our client. It’s not their fault what’s happening at the border.”
When the source spoke to Freight News earlier today, he said some of the shipper’s trucks had been waiting in the queue since this morning.
Sometimes it takes more than a day for a truck on the South African side to reach border control.
Add another two to three hours before a driver is Covid-tested and cargo cleared by customs, and it all affects the speed with which the entire shipment should be processed in order to sustain profitability.
Trucks doing the back-haul out of Mozambique are no better off, sometimes even standing for longer according to the Federation of East and Southern African Road Transport Associations (Fesarta).
It added to their turnaround woes, he said, as it was very difficult to synchronise transport efficiencies when border processes were out of kilter with one another.
According to information at his disposal, the delays on the South African side are caused by a police roadblock controlling truck movements, limiting trucks to 40 at a time inside the border control area, temperature check and questionnaires, reduced customs staff because of the coronavirus, and throughput volumes by far exceeding human resource capacity at the moment.
“It’s not a feasible situation. We’re already facing steep import duties in Kenya and now we have costs upon costs to contend with too.”
Fesarta said they were looking into the situation.