Table Bay battles vessel overload

‘Slot system the only salvation’ Ray Smuts THE ARRIVAL of 16 container ships over two days at the Port of Cape Town last week has put severe pressure on the port’s already stretched resources. The first four months of the year are admittedly the busiest for the container terminal as the deciduous fruit season goes into overdrive. But even so Table Bay resembled a mini-Dunkirk at mid-week with at least 17 vessels at anchor - about half container ships. Sixteen container ships in line for berths over a weekend is certainly not the norm as the tally for a week is around 20. And since the terminal has only four berths and weekends are particularly busy for SAECS slot vessels, average delays of 48 hours were recorded. “Unfortunately there is going to be a knock-on effect,” says manager Ian Bouwer, who denies any problem with productivity. “We are working about 16 moves per hour on average, up to 30 at times. It’s not a question that the port is congested but that the berths are in actual fact congested.” Another factor is that call sizes have doubled to around 500 boxes on average per vessel over the last year with some ships carrying three times as many. What is more, one gantry crane is out of commission for safety maintenance, equating to a loss of 316 moves per hour. Ongoing work necessitating the replacement of more than 5 000 bolts on each crane is expected to last six weeks at the very least. The number of vessels calling at the container terminal increased to 31 in March compared with 20 in March 2002 but fewer TEUs were handled last month - around 44 000 compared with 52 000 in March 2002. Taking all these factors into consideration terminal manager Ian Bouwer is left with only one conclusion. “If we are to manage effectively in future it’s going to be a case of every single vessel coming onto the slot system and for us to insist that when a vessel’s allotted time is up it must vacate the berth. “We are turning the vessels around as fast as we can, we simply cannot do it any faster,” insists Bouwer, admitting wryly that while the bottom line is going to be well up over last year - probably by around 15% - fewer ships will bring some relief. As to the blunt question whether the terminal could face renewed chaos on the lines of last year when caught unaware by the arrival of hundreds of empty boxes, Bouwer commented: “The empty stack created to ease congestion is working phenomenally well with a dwell time of no more than 36 hours per container.” (The stack holds about 800 boxes at any given time).