'Rather focus on productivity at existing ports'

The success of Coega might boil down to the proposed Industrial Development Zone but it won’t work unless they can attract business to/from Gauteng. There will not be enough transit cargo and which shipping lines will use Coega and which will reject Coega entirely? Those issues are far from clear and yet the project is proceeding. If Transnet and P&O do not sign a contract it will be interesting to see if any other parties are invited or what Transnet will then do. Will P&O operate the entire terminal or will there be more operators? We have no idea, which is slightly odd. There are also other crucial questions such as which customers have confirmed their full commitment and support of the project. The commercial world has not to our knowledge said they welcome Coega. What is needed in South Africa are fewer, larger and more efficient port terminals to cater for increasing numbers of containers. At Maersk Sealand we believe Durban is the obvious choice, but the port has to improve productivity. The number of crane moves must reach approximately 25 an hour and be consistent. It is a matter of getting throughput in Durban more than just more space. We also need more containers on rail than road - a change with multiple positive spin-offs in road safety, environment, costs etc. We find that Port Elizabeth is a well functioning port not used to maximum capacity (actually less than 50%) so why build a new port right next door? If it is for transit cargo then any other port would do just as well. For the significant volumes to/from Gauteng we cannot see how Coega is the right choice. The Coega Project was decided quickly and we do not recall a proper bidding round. The building of larger ships to achieve low unit costs through economy of scale is only realistic when such vessels call at as few ports as possible. In South Africa we can hardly expect, as some indicate, that we need larger container facilities in Richards Bay, Durban, Port Elizabeth, Cape Town and Saldanha. Now also Coega. We do not need all these ports. We need few but efficient ports to cater for large vessels and then to boost the infrastructure to cater for the massive volumes of containers in the future.