New Portnet rates draw vocal complaints

6 Apr 2001 - By Staff reporter

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Should have been moratorium while tariff is restructured, writes Alan Peat

THE NEW tariffs from the port operations division of Portnet - detailing
the old and new rates for each service - showed an average 9%-10% increase.
They were released just in time for the April 1 imposition - in their fully detailed splendour - but met with vocal complaint from the freight industry.
The general consensus amongst shippers, shipping lines and forwarders was that everyone was waiting for the reformed rates structure from both port authority and operations arms.
What would be wanted then, according to Brian Mulligan, operations director of Ršhlig Grindrod, would be market-related rates and a productivity to match the charges.
He's got only a brief comment to make on the 9%-10% average increase. They're lucky they can ask for such an increase, Mulligan said. Nobody in the forwarding industry - which now has to add all sorts of value-added elements to its service - could think of such an increase in rates.
This revised rates structure coming in the middle of discussions between Portnet and the shipping lines on the detail of the service level agreements - expected to be signed up within a couple of months - is not what Alan Rolfe, operations manager of MSC and chairman of the Association of Shipping Lines (ASL) expected.
We're very unhappy about the way this whole thing is being handled, he said. It's happening while we are still involved in on-going negotiations for the reform and simplification of the tariff structure.
Nolene Lossau, executive director of the Shippers Council, is even more abrupt.
The rate for terminal handling charges (THC) for a 20-foot (6-metre) container has gone up by 6% - and that's not unreasonable.
But our feeling is that there should have been a moratorium till the tariff restructuring is completed - now expected for round about September.