Rail backlog finally cleared up

The serious backlog of containers raised in Durban by a railway workers’ strike was finally cleared up by April 28 – 11 days after the strike ended. Lawrie Bateman, MD of rail users MSC Logistics, told FTW containers discharged from ships on April 27 were already through the day after. “There are only 865 TEUs waiting at the dockside to be railed,” he added. “This is a massive improvement on the more than 1 200 import boxes that were standing waiting for trains at the height of the strike, with as many as 12 trains full of exports still stacked up at Kings Rest waiting to get into the port area.”