Ngqura has proved the sceptics wrong - Morwe

South Africa does not dream big enough, says Tau Morwe, CEO of Transnet National Ports Authority. “In Busan in South Korea they recently finished the building of a 40-berth container terminal. They are not asking where the volumes are going to come from or how will they sustain it. They are a nation of dreamers who think big – they know they will make it happen,” he told participants at the monthly Transport Forum held at the Port of Ngqura last week. “In South Africa we are arguing about the necessity for two more berths at the Port of Ngqura to bring the total to four. We are hesitant to take the steps that will create capacity and allow us to go out there and market ourselves to the world.” He said when Ngqura was started there was no belief in the project from within Transnet and the community at large. “We were in the middle of a downturn and at board level the argument was that there was no feasibility in taking the project further. In fact everyone was sure it was going to fail. As South Africans we are afraid to take advantage of opportunities presented to us.” Morwe said Ngqura was a prime example of what could happen if South Africa allowed itself to dream big. “Within the first quarter of operations we were already handling more than 100 000 TEUs and now we are in the region of some 600 000.” This was quite significant taking into consideration the first vessel called at the port less than two years ago. “Our anchor tenant at Ngqura was an aluminium smelter but as our plans progressed the smelter fizzled away. It took some convincing of the Transnet board that Ngqura did not need the smelter to be successful and could become a major hub for transhipment containers – a feat we are slowly but surely achieving.” Morwe said when plans were first announced that four berths were to be built at Ngqura it was met with scepticism and disbelief. “We undertook trips to Chile, Brazil and the US in an effort to attract more shipping lines to this part of the world. We were in the process of creating something the world did not have – short sea shipping between this part of the world and the rest. I think it is a concept the people still don’t understand.” He said Ngqura would, by the end of 2011, have a capacity of two million TEUs. “It is not about the volumes we are currently handling, but the fact that we have a state-of-the-art facility that has the capacity to meet the demand. It is now time to go and create that demand.”