Lucrative container trade shifts focus away from breakbulk

The focus by terminal operators on the more lucrative container trade in favour of breakbulk is impacting negatively on the breakbulk industry, according to Arie ter Veen, managing director of Africa Port Services. “In West Africa the privatisation of terminals has led the terminal owners to enter the container business big time as it is more lucrative than breakbulk cargo,” he said. The decision by government to see cargo moved out of ports more quickly has also impacted on the industry as the freight by its very nature is large and cumbersome and difficult to move – and the areas around the ports are often congested. With the streets outside of Lagos a complete nightmare due to the horrendous traffic jams caused by container trucks, getting cargo in and out of the port is often near impossible, he said. “The move to reduce the time cargo spends in ports is a direct result of people using the port warehouses as free storage for their cargo because it is so difficult to get it out. But that has reduced the space for containers which had seen them being stacked ten high.” He said to address this matter legislation had been changed restricting cargo dwell time in the port. “Bureaucracy on the other hand sometimes stops cargo from moving out fast. Ultimately ports should have areas where cargo can be kept temporarily, but as containerisation grows and breakbulk becomes less important there is just no move towards ensuring such facilities.” He said an additional challenge was the fact that very few ports had any space left to develop such facilities for project cargo or breakbulk. According to Ter Veen, this was not a major issue in some of the more mature markets, but if one looked at Angola it was clear that cargo was not flowing through the ports optimally. “It takes a minimum of 30 days to clear anything in Angola, while it is not surprising to have cargo held up for 90 days in the port due to bureaucracy. The solution in the entire west African region lies in establishing better relationships with authorities in an effort to reduce bureaucracy to move cargo faster.” CAPTION Lagos traffic nightmare ... getting cargo in and out of the port is often impossible.