Exporters in the Western Cape are running out of patience as the knock-on effect of Durban’s port issues continues to batter schedule reliability at the Port of Cape Town. “It is impacting the entire country during the busiest time of the year,” said a freight forwarder who preferred to remain anonymous. “The Port of Durban is not coping and it is a concern.” Terry Gale, chairman of the Exporters Club Western Cape, said a weekly guaranteed service to the US from the Port of Cape Town was simply no longer reliable. “There are exporters in the province with agreements in place to ship containers weekly. The service has been so unreliable – with no certainty as to when the vessels will call – that we now have a situation where instead of containers going weekly, they are finally all going to sail on one vessel at the end of the month, reaching the client just before Christmas,” he said. “While one might argue at least the client is getting the goods, the reality is that these are not the agreements the exporters signed with their international customers.” According to shipping lines major efforts are under way to return integrity and reliability to the schedule rotations and a number of contingencies have been put in place. Transnet told FTW that operations to improve capacity in Durban were ongoing with teams working around the clock. At Pier 2 in Durban damage to ship-to-shore cranes was severe. Cranes 524 and 530 will require longterm repairs and remain out of operation, but crane 526 was returned to operations 12 days earlier than planned on November 17. Crane 522, however, after being returned to operations was found to have further structural damage and will have to be repaired. At the time of going to print cranes 522, 512, 524, 528 and 530 were all out of operation and being repaired. In its latest status report Transnet indicated that Pier 1 would remain a one-berth operation until sufficient equipment becomes available for deployment.
