Maersk has confirmed that one of its container vessels, the Vallvik, currently anchored off the Port of Durban, will not meet a scheduled call at the Port of Gqeberha (Port Elizabeth) because of time lost due to the cyberattack that brought down Transnet’s Navis system.
A statement released by the Danish line says it’s decided to omit Gqeberha in order to honour estimated arrival time at the Port of Cape Town.
“All imports for Port Elizabeth will be discharged in Durban and will be routed via the Protea service from Durban to Port Elizabeth.”
Maersk added that all exports from Port Elizabeth would be transferred to the MSC Jeanne.
The schedule recovery announcement follows in the wake of last week’s digital systems breach that crippled operations across the port and rail parastatal’s entire network.
Operations were only partially restored on Friday, July 23, by reverting to manual processing of cargo.
And while industry waits for Transnet to issue a definitive statement about the cause of the biggest hack in its history of online processing, news - like Maersk’s schedule notification - continues to filter through about vessels bypassing South African ports if not skipping them altogether.
