Ray Smuts
Southern African Fruit Terminals, the 'new kid' on the portside cooling block, eagerly awaits the outcome of an enquiry into what it believes
is Portnet Cape Town's excessive quayside cargo handling charge.
At the heart of the probe initiated by the Exporter's Chamber promoting equal competition access to industry assets - and wholly endorsed by SAFT - is Portnet's R55 a pallet tariff.
This is a very real issue hurting exporters. says SAFT's operations director Steven Janssen. We could do the same job for less than R20 and float the benefits back to the fruit industry which would be our goal. Sadly, even if we wanted to, Portnet would not allow it.
Managing director Patrick McLoughlin believes the time is nigh to level the playing field in that opposition Capespan with its IHS terminal does not pay an equivalent tariff.
Certainly, Capespan has an annual lease of around R8 million with Portnet - we also have leasing costs though not at quayside - but they have the added privilege of being able to schedule vessels as they deem fit and have exclusivity to quayside operations for a royalty of R6,98per pallet.
We would be quite happy to pay this royalty for the same privileges but that does not seem likely now. Were it to come about, however, we could drop the per pallet charge from R55 to around R30, take our margin of about 15% and pass the rest on to the producer.
Both McLoughlin and Janssen stress that while unhappy with Portnet's prevailing tariff they are satisfied with its levels of service and co-operation at the multi-purpose terminal.
The authority's role in this regard is to off-load pallets at quayside and place them under the crane hook alongside the vessel.
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