SAECS rejigs and puts CT first

WITH A rescheduling of the sailings of the SAECS (SA-Europe Container Service) fleet, Cape Town has once again become the first SA port of call for ships southbound from Europe.
Introduced with the arrival of the SA Waterberg yesterday (January 14), it's an "all gain and no loss" situation, according to consortium spokesmen.
It is a return to the days of old - with the SA schedule reading Cape Town, Port Elizabeth, Durban, Port Elizabeth, Cape Town.
This was changed when management viewed the unusual situation of two SA ports being called-on twice on each voyage - unlike the North West Continent end of the run where each port only had one call.
The schedule was, therefore, changed to miss out CT as first stop - and introduce a port rotation of PE, Durban, CT.
This (with Friday the named day of call at PE) also suited the Eastern Cape's motor vehicle industry - which offers heavyweight support to the service on the import side of the trade.
"But the schedule is constantly under review to see if there is a better way of doing things," said Richard Warnes, media liaison manager of Safmarine, "and CT still remained a logical first port of call.
"But the challenge in the rescheduling exercise was to see how we could achieve this - while doing nothing that was detrimental to our agreement with the motor industry to call at PE on a Friday."
But, when adjustments were made at the northern end of the run, and Lisbon dropped as a port of call, a fine tuning of the schedule became possible - with suitable days of call at all the ports."
The port rotation now reads: CT on Wednesday/Thursday; PE on Friday/Saturday; Durban, Sunday-Tuesday; PE, Wednesday/Thursday; and CT Friday-Sunday.
"The Cape Town importers will be better off than when CT was skipped," said Warnes, "and the Eastern Cape customer base still remains in benefit."
A more minor reason for the rescheduling need was the SAECS use of the Canary Islands as a transhipment hub - linking into both NWC and Mediterranean services.
This saw the southbound voyages running with much larger cargo volumes - and the ships, therefore, running lower in the water. With draft restrictions at PE - this also meant that this port as the first call was occasionally impossible for the really fully-laden vessels.
Although not a motivating factor - the return to CT as first port of call also suits Safmarine's passenger service.
"We had always found that European passengers visiting SA wanted to call at the Cape first," said Warnes. "It also allows passengers to sail the CT-Durban-CT round trip - using our ships as their "hotel" in Durban."
BY ALAN PEAT