Dave Giraudeau - vessels have had to sit for up to three days outside ports. Ray Smuts ‘FLUID’ HAS become an oft-used SA Port Operations (Sapo) descriptive for the dramatic improvement at Cape Town container terminal and that is how it was again last week, fuelling hopes that the Mother City might just become the first to have the irksome ports additional set aside next month. They may disagree on other aspects but where the freight and shipping communities are in total agreement is that the surcharge of $100 per TEU and $200 per FEU has placed a good deal of strain on all; a measure neither the liner operators nor their customers would have wished in the first instance. Mitsui O.S.K. Lines (MOL) managing director, Dave Giraudeau, is certainly looking forward to when it will become known whether the additional goes or stays but he does make the point, as have others, that it was born out of necessity. “It would be an absolute pleasure not to have to charge the additional because it is putting a lot of pressure on us. A number of customers have resisted it but many have understood. “That our vessels have had to sit for up to three days outside a port, bypass or cut and run is the reality we have faced.” Referring to the more recent concerted efforts by all players to come to grips with problems in the ports, Giraudeau is mindful of the fact that the shipping lines have for the last three years been ‘a lone voice in the wilderness’ in urging the port authorities to ‘invest up’, hence the formation of the Container Liner Operators Forum (Clof). “Only now that the lines have applied the surcharge is everybody singing the same tune in the sense they are also putting pressure on the ports directly, which is great.” He welcomes the additional equipment earmarked for Cape Town container terminal in the form of four new four-high straddle carriers, two second-hand cranes and more reefer plug points but stresses that Sapo has to invest more on equipment. “There is no doubt that there have been huge improvements at Cape Town container terminal. Sapo is talking to us weekly and there is a whole new energy and effort from all stakeholders.”
