Transnet Port Terminals (TPT) will continue to work towards improving its efficiency and performance as it aims to become one of the top five terminal operators in the world, according to chief executive, Nozipho Sithole.
“Achieving less than the desired performance levels is not acceptable,” she told FTW during a recent visit to Cape Town. “We are nowhere close to where we need to be. There is still a lot of work that has to be done, but the team is making progress and they will continue to make progress.”
Sithole is adamant to achieve the goal of TPT becoming not only a worldclass terminal operator but one of the best five globally.
“As operators, we need to consistently make sure we are delivering an efficient service, both on the land and waterside across the ports in the country,” she said. “It shouldn't matter what the weather does in Cape Town, for example. We know this is a port that is affected by weather. This is not new or out of the ordinary.”
Referring to the major operational challenges often experienced in Cape Town due to the port being wind-bound, Sithole said ports, no matter where in the world, were all affected by some challenge or other.
“We know what the challenges are. In Cape Town, it is weather. We need to be able to recover from that weather quickly and efficiently. Within 20 minutes of the weather clearing up, the port should be up and running again.”
She said the port needed the anti-sway systems on its cranes and the mooring system was being investigated as a possible solution for surging.
“The discipline in our operations has to be what makes us customer-centric. If the berthing delays are zero, then it must continue to be zero, regardless of what the weather does. If we have set the target of a shift change for 20 minutes then we need to make sure it happens in 20 minutes,” she said.
