Transnet said that there have been significant productivity increases at the Port of Cape Town in recent months. (Gallo Images/Die Burger/Jaco Marais)
- Transnet says that waterside productivity at Transnet has improved by 30% in the past six months, helped by new equipment and policies.
- Exporter forums say a sense of optimism about improvements being sustained is returning to the industry.
- But there are still concerns that conditions at the port will remain challenging for the year ahead.
- For more financial news, go to the News24 Business front page.
Transnet claims that waterside productivity at the Port of Cape Town has increased by 30% in the last six months, which comes as industry bodies report that a sense of optimism is returning about logistics capacity in the Western Cape.
Oscar Borchards, the managing executive of the Cape region at Transnet, told News24 that the deployment of new equipment and the introduction of policy changes at the port have had a significant positive effect on performance.
Export forums claim that a sense of optimism has slowly returned to Western Cape exporters in recent months, despite the fact that the port was recently ranked as the world’s worst in a survey by the World Bank and S&P Global. Transnet has pushed back against the rating, arguing that the metrics used to rank the ports were flawed.
READ | Transnet and freight association push back on report that SA ports are the world’s worst
Despite a poor start to the fruit export season at the beginning of the year, changes at the port in the last six months seem to be having an impact.
Borchards says that the acquisition of seven additional rubber tyre gantry cranes, which are used to move and stack containers, and 10 haulers, or trucks used to transport containers, has helped significantly.
Key vacancies at the port have also been filled, staff have been placed on a different work-hour rotation structure, and the Navis operating system used by the port has been improved.
In addition to the 30% reported waterside productivity boost in the last six months, Borchards said that vessels at anchorage had decreased from six to one and dwell time was cut from 2.8 days to two.
“We can confirm that performance at the Cape Town Container Terminal (CTCT) has improved in 2024,” said Borchards.
‘You can only go up’
Export forums, which represent key industry players, also reported performance improvements at the port over the last six months.
Terry Gale, the chair of Exporters Western Cape, an industry body that represents the interests of exporters in the province, said working numbers at the port of Cape Town are improving week on week and there was optimism in the industry that this would be maintained.
Gale added:
We hit rock bottom, and the one good thing about hitting rock bottom is you can only go up.
Hale expressed confidence in Transnet’s executive management and said that he is optimistic that the port performance will continue to improve.
The one caveat is the wind, and in difficult conditions, which are common in Cape Town, activity grinds to a halt.
Antoinette Van Heerden, a logistics manager at the South African Fresh Produce Exporters’ Forum (FPEF), said that wind can destroy an export season.
“The wind determines a lot of what your season does [and] if there is a lot of wind in February which is the peak of the peak – disastrous.”
READ | Fruit exports plummet as Cape Town port catastrophe worsens
She said that the FPEF was still planning for a potentially disrupted fruit export season later this year.
“We might still have a challenging fruit season at the end of the year. We plan for all options,” she said.
She said that their sense as an industry body is that Transnet is undergoing a culture shift and are being much more forthcoming with information, and willingness to engage, adding:
I think we have turned the tide, it’s really my impression.
“Productivity is starting to creep up slowly. We have to realise that there is still old equipment, there are still things that are going to constrain the port to some extent, but what can be done either is being done or is being pursued.”