Heavy weather delays Kota Sabas’s welcome
BY THE time this column appears, Pacific International Line’s (PIL) new container ship Kota Sabas may have berthed at Cape Town’s container terminal after a protracted delay caused by the weekend’s heavy weather that closed the port to incoming vessels for 58 hours.
In addition, the normally smoothly operating container terminal experienced gantry downtime with two gantries not operating and a third also out of action for a short time. This led to delays to container ships of around 48 hours, and forced PIL to postpone its welcoming function for the new ship twice, but when berthing schedules became even more uncertain, the company reluctantly had to cancel the event.
That is beyond the company’s control, yet it is unfortunate as so many maiden voyage arrivals are not marked by any ceremony and go unnoticed, unlike similar occasions in the past when tugs sprayed their fire nozzles and were even dressed overall, and shippers were entertained lavishly aboard the new vessel.
Kota Sabas is a particularly fine ship. She has cranes so she is not dependent on shoreside equipment to work cargo. Among her nearly 3900-teu cargo capacity are 500 reefer slots that are important for shipments of fish, meat and fruit.
PIL’s history is linked to the rise of Singapore as a shipping centre. It began as a small coasting operation out of Singapore in 1967, and during a large expansion phase in the late 1970s, bought a number of good ships from companies who were switching to containerised services. Among the ships that joined the fleet at that time were some Nedlloyd vessels that, prior to the extensive restructuring of Dutch shipping in 1977, had been familiar callers in South African ports in the colours of Royal Interocean Line.
As much Asian cargo was still moving in breakbulk ships, the PIL fleet continued to expand, and among their acquisitions in 1988 were the Unicorn multi-purpose ships Kowie and Nahoon that continued to trade for the Singaporebased company for a further 14 and 12 years respectively.
Although PIL continues to offer multipurpose services, mainly in Asian waters, it now operates a large fleet of container ships between Asia and Africa as well as between Asia and the Middle East.
Kota Sabas will join PIL’s Asia-west Africa service, a burgeoning trade as the economies of countries such as Nigeria, Ghana and Ivory Coast have expanded rapidly on the back of oil and other mineral production. Modern harbours with busy container terminals have long replaced the old surfboats, quaint anchorages and rickety jetties that once were characteristic of cargo operations along the Gulf of Guinea.
To move the growing volume of Chinese goods bound for west Africa, PIL’s ships on this trade call at six Chinese ports, two ports in Korea, Singapore and Cape Town before heading for west Africa. Among their Nigerian ports of call is the curiously named Tin Can, adjacent to Lagos. A shipmaster from another company told me that the immigration, customs and port health officials, who had cleared his ship into Apapa (Lagos) the day before descended on the same vessel when she shifted to Tin Can. And their hands were out for hand-outs to solve the myriad imaginary “problems” that these scoundrels “discovered” on board.
The return passage to Asia is not as profitable as there is little cargo moving out of west Africa, and although the ships may seem to have good loads of containers aboard, the vessels’ draught marks indicate that many are empty containers that are being repositioned to Asian ports.