The latest Transport and Freight Index (TFI) report by Ctrack reveals that five out of the six sectors measured experienced declines in June, with only slight recovery observed in July, where four sectors continued to display negative trends.
On a year-on-year (y-o-y) basis, the TFI recorded a 1% decrease in July compared to the same month the previous year.
Road freight, which is crucial to South Africa's logistics as it accounts for 83.6% of all cargo moved, was particularly impacted, registering a sharp decline of 3.9% in July, following a 1.8% drop in June.
This sector was the only one that did not show improvement by July and was identified as the main contributor to the overall decline of the TFI, after stronger performance in earlier months.
Rail freight also recorded a month-on-month (m-o-m) decline of 2.4% in July.
However, it has shown an annual recovery with a 9.4% year-to-date increase.
Conversely, air freight stood out as the strongest performer among the sectors, despite experiencing a m-o-m decline of 7.2%.
Year-to-date data indicates air freight has risen by 11.1%.
Overall, it remains 16.3% higher than last year.
The TFI also reported a significant decline in container throughput at South Africa’s ports, which fell by 7.9% m-o-m in July, following a 1.9% drop in June.
Although exported container volumes increased by 7.9% in June, they plunged by 24% in July due to severe weather conditions that aggravated ongoing issues at the ports, such as poor productivity and frequent equipment failures.
The storage and handling sector faced difficulties as well, with cargo storage levels dropping by 3.9% m-o-m and down 8.4% compared to the previous year.
While the recent data for June and July points to disappointing performance, it masks an overall improvement year-to-date across most sectors.
The TFI report suggests that despite setbacks caused by adverse weather and operational inefficiencies, there are signs of resilience in certain areas of South Africa's logistics sector that could contribute positively to economic recovery efforts going forward.
