PORT Elizabeth business is changing tack on the Coega port project. Having been instrumental in promoting and driving the process to the point where it has cabinet approval and is now the responsibility of a government-appointed implementing authority, business in the city is now calling on government to think big. Port Elizabeth Regional Chamber of Commerce and Industry (Percci) ceo Kevin Wakeford has joined calls by P&O Nedlloyd sales director Richard Burmeister for Portnet to include a deep-water container terminal in its plans for the Coega port.
Coega planners should look beyond a bulk port and give serious consideration to including containerisation facilities in their overall planning, says Wakeford.
The Jebel-Ali Industrial Zone in Dubai fast-tracked its economic growth and sustainability by linking their planning to the need for transhipment facilities for new generation container vessels.
Vessels are becoming deeper and far larger. A new generation vessel carries up to 6 000 containers at a time and obviously calls at far fewer ports. This international trend is forcing states to reconfigure their infrastructure planning by making provision for deepwater container harbours.
Wakeford said he was not calling on Portnet to abandon plans for bulk ore terminals at Coega to serve the anchor tenant Billiton. There is a need for both developments.
Coega, he says, is the only port in South Africa with the necessary back-space to accommodate a new-generation container hub that would include container refurbishment and even manufacturing facilities.
Port Elizabeth has the expertise in that it is a world leader in the manufacture of tank containers. The existing South African container ports do not have the necessary deepwater facilities and we would end up playing second fiddle to other deepwater facilities in the Southern Hemisphere.
The trend is for new generation vessels to call at fewer ports and to offload containers for transhipment to shallow-water harbours. If South Africa did not have the necessary facilities the shipping lines would go to South American ports. This would add several days to shipment times for both outward and inward-bound cargo and would increase the shipping cost per container by several hundred rand, he said. APL president, Timothy Rhein recently told the Ports '98 Conference in Los Angeles that megaports of the future would be bigger, deeper, more automatic, have a longer reach with their cranes and will also operate around the clock. Coega is one of the few deepwater opportunities in Southern Africa to have adequate backspace for industrial development, says Wakeford.
By Ed Richardson
