Transhipments push CT terminal volumes to record level

RAY SMUTS
AUGUST WILL go down as a momentous month in the history of Cape Town container terminal, which handled the largest number of containers since containerisation came to the fore some three decades ago . The movement of 65 832 boxes, mostly forty-footers, through the terminal is credited to a sharp rise in transhipments. Oscar Borchards, business unit manager, says the increase is due in the main to empty containers destined for West African ports. Sixty ships came and went during August, reflecting an ongoing trend of fewer arrivals but larger, on average, call sizes – of the order of 550TEUs to 600TEUs per vessel. Import volumes were 9% higher than exports while transhipment boxes accounted for 27% of the total handled. Meanwhile, the shipping industry holds its collective breath for the outcome of a second Transnet proposal to extend terminal stacking space by 300-metres, at a cost now reckoned to be in the region of R5 billion. The parastatal, castigated by environmental minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk over certain aspects of its original report, is in the process of probing the feasibility of an inland terminal (as suggested by the minister) but discounted by many as cost-ineffective.