‘Moving average way above breakpoint’
ALAN PEAT
SHIPPERS AHOY - those of you anticipating seeing the end of Durban’s port congestion surcharge, put your hopes on hold.
The contentious US$100 per twenty foot equivalent unit (TEU) surcharge - paid by cargo owners to cover the port’s inefficiencies, and described by the shipping conferences as “a port additional” - looks set to stay.
The vital signs are bad.
The conferences have demanded the “additional” until the average ship delay falls below a moving average of 16-hours for 28 consecutive days.
But, despite the festive season lull - and frequent reports of “no ships waiting outside” and “empty berths” during December - the figures used by the lines’ representative body, the Container Liner Operators Forum (Clof), to monitor the moving average is still way above the breakpoint.
Don’t be misled, FTW was loudly informed, by the “expected average delays” included by Sapo in its weekly Durban container terminal (DCT) reports.
The lines ignore them, we were told. “They’re no more than what they say,” the source added, “only ‘expected averages’ - not what actually happens.”
“Pity,” said a forwarding source, “because these figures looked much prettier than what Clof eventually issued as its rolling average.”
Indeed, the Sapo figures for expected delays since the end of November have been consistently under 20 hours - even down about the 10-11-hour mark in certain reports - and only went over 20 hours to 22 hours on January 19.
From the Clof-calculated figures presented to the Port Crisis Management Committee (PCMC), the actual story since the middle of last year is as follows.
In July and August 2003, the Durban container terminal hit its record low-point, with the daily average berthing delays - as measured by SA Port Operations (Sapo) and the lines - broke the 100-hour barrier.
At the end of August, FTW was told, the 28-day rolling average peaked at around 65-hrs.
But, since then, and up to late December, there has been a steady decline in average ship delay hours.
With considerable improvements in overall terminal performance and reduced weather interruptions, the daily delays even dropped below that 16-hour level for a short period during late November and early December.
By mid-December, the moving, 28-day average had dropped to around 22 hours.
During late December and up to early January, however, the situation has turned again - with vessel delays inching upwards and bringing the 28-day average to around 32 hours at year-end.
For those of you aghast at this poor performance during what is the Port of Durban’s quietest point of the year, there is an explanation.
“A decline in performance over the holiday period is to be expected,” a senior forwarding source in Durban told FTW, “with employee leave affecting productivity.”
There was another unexpected glitch factor, he added. The report was that two gantry crane breakdowns took place over this period, delaying two ships for a lengthy period.
