Ship repair gets relegated for more profitable pursuits

Ship repair and ship building at South African ports remains something of a Cinderella in the sense that while it is acknowledged that these services are necessary, no-one wants them in their kitchen. Transnet will in all likelihood be unhappy with such sentiments, and will point out how much valuable space is given over for ship repair in ports like Durban, Cape Town and East London. But any scrutiny of Port Master Plans indicates an alarming inclination towards moving these facilities aside or even relocating them for what are seen as more lucrative activities such as container handling. The Durban Bayhead is a case in point, where recent master plans have suggested that the best solution for Durban ship building is to relocate to Richards Bay. On paper this may look like a good idea, i.e. move all ‘dirty’ cargo to the port that specialises in bulk cargoes while retaining ‘clean’ cargo like containers close to the main transport corridor to Gauteng. But as shipping people, and ship repairers in particular will tell you, what looks good on paper does not always work in reality. Ships don’t plan their mechanical breakdowns. Nor do ship owners want to waste valuable time taking their ship to another port for emergency repairs. Logically, the ports with the most ship calls will attract the most repairs – and that means Durban and Cape Town. Despite the lack of official support, the ship repair industry has been remarkably successful in recent years and has also begun attracting a degree of ship building, with seven tugs, several bunker barges and other vessels under construction in Durban alone. In the case of Durban, despite immeasurable odds, the industry has managed to keep Durban in the forefront of ship repair and to resuscitate the once thriving ship building industry, using innovation and ingenuity in the process. Despite the challenges and threats the industry has also made considerable investment in the future of Durban ship repair. It is a message that those in the industry have been trying to convince both government and Transnet, that having ship repairers available is essential for any port that caters for large numbers of ships. Transnet’s own ship repair facilities, its 80-year-old dry dock, and the more recently replaced but troublesome floating dock have been allowed to deteriorate owing to insufficient maintenance and care. Ship repairers using the dry dock are forced to arrange for private cranes to replace non-existent dock cranes that would be regarded as part and parcel of the service anywhere else in the world. The private sector and Transnet have been in discussion for many years over proposals that the dry dock, in which Transnet shows no indication of making investments, be privatised, but so far to no avail. This is reminiscent of the story about a ship repair company, Elgin Brown & Hamer, which applied to place a floating dock at Cape Town. After five years of waiting for a response they went to Namibia and were welcomed with open arms. Today Walvis Bay has not one but two identical floating docks in service with that company and is attracting good business, much of it business that would have gone to Cape Town. Transnet’s own floating dock is another case in point, having been out of service for more than a year, while the adjacent Eldock has enjoyed full occupancy for much of that time. It appears that the message to the ship repair industry is that they are on their own and must muddle along as best they can without state encouragement. Fortunately the industry hasn’t muddled along but is proving both resilient and successful. There have been numerous highlights during the past year, including some major ship repair and refurbishment contracts with large amounts of steel replacement after vessels have gone aground or otherwise suffered failure along the long southern African coast. Ship building has shown a strong resurgence, with orders for seven harbour tugs that are now under construction at the Durban Southern African Shipyards at a cost in excess of R500 million. Several bunker barges have been completed at Dormac Marine and others double-hulled in accordance with the latest MARPOL requirements. Dormac Marine has announced plans to build its own 240m long dry dock with a width of 40m on the company site at Bayhead. Many people in the shipping industry regard this as extremely ambitious yet it may never have been necessary had the Transnet dry dock question been addressed. SA Shipyards is meanwhile importing a small floating dock, ostensibly to use as a launch vehicle for the tug shipbuilding programme although it would be naive to think this will not be used for ship repair in the future. These projects and other ordinary ship repairs undertaken by the many companies and sub-contractors and suppliers add immeasurably to the importance of Durban as a port, while also increasing and adding value to the skills base of the city and environs and, of course, generating substantial amounts of capital for the region.