Rotterdam computer fault snarls up Las Palmas traffic

ALAN PEAT
IN THE hub port of Las Palmas in the Canary Islands containers bound for SA are being seriously delayed because of port congestion. A lot of the blame has been laid at the disruptive effect on overall container traffic of an on-going system problem at the major European port of Rotterdam, with shippers rerouting to Las Palmas instead. It’s a major blow for SA importers, according to a local importer of cranes for mounting on commercial road vehicles, who requested anonymity. “They’ve declared an emergency in Las Palmas,” she said, “and containers for Africa are just stacking up.” The company had import containers stuck in the port for three weeks at time of writing and had missed three sailings on the trot. “We’re going to lose orders if we can’t keep up a steady flow of imports,” the importer said. “It’s going to hurt a lot of SA importers.” A major culprit is Rotterdam, where a new computer system was installed about three months ago – and has since been refusing to link up with other transport modes’ computer systems, and thoroughly snarling up data for traffic through the port. The company’s import containers had previously been railed from its Italian source to Rotterdam, then shipped direct to SA. But because the port’s system would not talk to the railways, it had been decided to re-route the containers out of Italian ports and then to SA via the Las Palmas hub – where the latest shipments have languished in the stacks waiting for available capacity out of the port. Rotterdam was confirmed as being a big problem in the Europe-SA shipping trade by Malte Kirsten of Deutsche Afrika Linien (DAL) – part of the SA-Europe Container Service (SAECS) fleet. “That computer is still giving trouble,” he said. Added to that is the fact that Las Palmas is the hub for all Mediterranean cargo, and the added traffic flow out of that area of southern Europe as an alternative to Rotterdam has just been too much for the port to capably handle. With these two glitches on the SA-North West Continent (NWC) trade – and having to delay vessels to get the SAECS main loop back to a named-day schedule – the shipping line consortium effectively lost a voyage, according to Kirsten, and added to the trouble. Fighting to overcome the problem, he added, SAECS had also chartered in another vessel to bring stranded cargo down from Las Palmas. You can add “stronger than anticipated” southbound cargo flows on the Europe–SA trade, a Safmarine spokesman told FTW. “Together with an unprecedented demand for cargo capacity from the Mediterranean region, he added, “this has, in recent weeks, impacted the availability of additional capacity on this trade.” Lines were unable to provide more than the allocated capacity for cargo from the Med – and this resulted in the temporary hold-over of cargo from the Med in the port of Las Palmas. “One of the factors affecting available capacity on southbound flows is the demand for positioning empty reefers (refrigerated containers) in southern Africa,” said Safmarine. “An extra loader has been deployed to address this situation and the current delays being experienced by SA importers from the Med are expected to ease - with concurrent expected reduction in delays in Las Palmas.” Kirsten agreed – feeling that things should be back to normal before mid-month. “Our DAL Kalahari is due in Las Palmas on August 14,” he told FTW, “and we expect the backlog to have been cleared by then, and this voyage to run smoothly.”