A distinct upward data curve of week-on-week (w-o-w) recovery at South Africa’s ports is emerging through the weekly Cargo Movement Update (CMU) reports compiled by the South African Association of Freight Forwarders (Saaff) and Business Unity SA (Busa).
The latest CMU figures show that, for the week of August 11-17, an average of 14 168 TEU boxes were handled every day.
This is despite the previous CMU report projecting an expected decrease in the previous daily average of 13 121 TEU.
The w-o-w performance increase of 7.98% by Transnet Port Terminals was achieved despite the usual challenges – inclement weather, vacant berths, equipment breakdowns and shortages.
State-owned enterprise (SOE) Transnet, “must be commended for the progress we've seen in recent weeks,” said Dr Jacob van Rensburg, head of Research and Development at Saaff.
“We've seen better equipment reliability and an improvement in the overall fleet.”
It’s also not just nuts-and-bolts improvement by TPT, but overall progress at the larger SOE that’s becoming clear.
Van Rensburg said there had been “stronger operational coordination within the various aspects and business units”.
“We can see that throughout the entire port system is improved stakeholder alignment from the water side to the land side to the terminal evacuation. Consequently, these shifts are really making a noticeable difference.”
However, on the whole, the country’s port and rail network is still capable of handling significantly higher w-o-w volume levels.
“The key is to push through the reform agenda and not just to return to the 2018 highs that we are currently achieving, but also to surpass them and sustain momentum going forward.
“We are at a point where we are almost at the capacity of what the port system can do.”
Although the ports of Durban and Cape Town are recording notable throughput figures compared with post-Covid challenges in container movement, other ports are also performing well above weekly projections.
One such was the Port of Ngqura at Coega SEZ in the Eastern Cape, Van Rensburg said.
In addition to daily records for Coega, CMU data-tracking had also seen an increase in container volumes on a year-to-date basis, he added.
“The last six to seven to eight weeks have seen container volumes touching 100 000 a week, which is very encouraging indeed.
“It signals that we are moving in the right direction.”
