Capacity shortfalls around container stacking at the Port of Cape Town are jeopardising South African export concerns, a transporter based in the city is claiming.
With sailings to the United States in particular missed because of Transnet’s apparent inability to deal with problems experienced at the port, the situation has now lasted for at least two weeks.
The source, who was willing to be identified but whose name Freight News has decided to withhold, said he knows of at least one US-bound container ship, the 3464 TEU Hansa Asia, that has been waiting for a berthing slot for eight days.
In footage seen yesterday on a social media platform, several freight liners were queueing end-to-end at anchorage, waiting to enter the port.
It was posted by an industry representative, also known to Freight News, who said it was "a rare sight in Cape Town to see so many vessels waiting outside to berth at Cape Town terminal, a knock-on effect of delays caused by Covid-19 protocol".
According to the transporter, it’s probably correct that stacking delays are caused by extreme staff shortages brought on by port personnel staying at home due to Cape Town’s high Covid-19 infection rate.
“But it’s been like this now for how long. Can’t they do something about it?”
Riled by Transnet reportedly not telling industry what’s going on and what’s being done to restore throughput efficiencies, the source said: “It’s no reason to keep us in the dark though.
“Transnet appears to be hiding behind the coronavirus with no one telling us when we’ll be able to load containers. Meanwhile all we can say to our clients is that we don’t know what’s going on because no one is telling us.”
He added that transporters were desperate to hear from Transnet about shipping containers to the States as some manufacturers didn’t know how long they could shoulder the cost of missed export opportunities to the US.
“We want to open our economy but we get the impression Transnet doesn’t care. Why, for example, are there daily updates about what’s happening around the Port of Durban but we hear nothing.
“Is it because we’re a DA-run province?”
Politics aside, Freight News approached at least four people at Transnet yesterday with questions about what’s happening at the Port of Cape Town.
Two of the people are responsible for the parastatal’s communications and two are in executive positions.
Earlier this afternoon Transnet media liaison officer Nompumelelo Kunene said she was pushing hard to provide input on the issue, adding that she was waiting for officials to sign off on a response prepared for Freight News.
We had not received the comment by the time this report was ready for posting and simply couldn’t wait any longer. Should that comment be sent to us, we will post it as soon as we can.
“It’s really important that we know what’s going on,” the transporter said.
“We can’t have containers building up, waiting to be loaded. We have to put them into storage, adding to mounting costs for our clients.
"Without stacking schedules we simply can’t plan, and with Transnet merely saying that schedules are subject to change it’s simply not possible to plan.”
- At the 4pm deadline this afternoon Freight News had still not heard from Transnet. This after they indicated that they should be able to comment on this issue at noon today.
- LATEST: At 16:45 Freight News received the following response from Transnet, published here verbatim:
The onset of COVID-19 and declaration of the national lockdown immediately exempted employees with chronic medical conditions, compromised immune systems and those that are 60 years and above from the total workforce. Despite this, the Cape Town Multi-Purpose Terminal (MPT) has been operational since Level 5 to date, working at a reduced operational capacity with 60% of its employees currently on duty. Working the vessel has taken priority over sorting the stack, and while this happens interchangeably – the equal balancing of both these critical elements has been hard to achieve consistently. The technical team is also prioritising planned maintenance of the mobile harbour crane. The Cape Town MPT, which is currently challenged with consistent stacking, remains with a 120 000 TEU capacity while the Cape Town Container Terminal carries most of the province’s container volumes with a capacity of one million TEUs.
TPT is continuously reviewing and aligning its ramp up plans. Also engagements with customers are ongoing.
