P&O Ports experts move in to jack up Durban productivity

P&O Ports experts move in to jack up Durban productivity

TWO SENIOR port specialists from Australian port operator P&O Ports have been appointed to help improve productivity at the Durban container terminal.
The appointment coincides with the retirement and resignation of several senior Portnet personnel including the general manager for Eastern Ports (Durban, Richards Bay and East London) Jan Jansen who is retiring, and general manager commercial Gert de Beer. Unconfirmed reports indicate that a further five or six senior Portnet staff will shortly be leaving the company.
Confirming the departures of Jansen and de Beer, Pumi Sithole, the general manager of marketing at Portnet, said steps were being taken to amend management and reporting structures to ensure that the departures would have a negligible impact on the business, with no disruptions in service levels.
"Advance progress is being made in appointing two new chief executive officers for Portnet, who would start the divisionalisation process."
The P&O Ports experts will move in at the beginning of May for a period of 12 months. A spokesman for P&O Ports, which has expressed interest in becoming a major terminal operator in the port, told FTW he was very pleased with the arrangement and said his company would bring in its most experienced people.
P&O Ports as an international port operator already operates in a number of ports in various countries around the world, including specialist container ports. The company recently acquired strong interests in stevedoring activities in Durban and other SA ports along with a shareholding with Grindrod in several shoreside terminal operations in Durban.
The chairman of the Liner Operator's Forum and trade director of Safmarine, Brett Gray, said that the forum would support anything to improve productivity in the port. "The sooner they do this and get our ships moving more quickly in and out of the port the better. They have our full support."
Spokespeople for several other shipping lines agreed they would support anything that led to improvements in productivity at the terminal. Some however expressed some reservations, and a local director of one international shipping line said that, while as a shipping line he welcomed the news, he wondered if it was not six months too late.
"Things are currently working okay, even at a mere 14 container moves an hour, but what happens when things get busier and the port goes beyond 70 000 TEUs a month? Will the port then be able to cope? Perhaps the P&O Ports people should have come in earlier and maybe then we'd be ready for the busy months that lie ahead."
He added that Portnet maybe needed a shake-up at head office, not in Durban.
"What we need is a Coleman Andrews doing for Portnet what he did for South African Airways," he said.

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