Good weather, other factors lead to Cape Town Container Terminal backlog being cleared

A COMBINATION of good weather, an improved equipment reliability programme and increased human resources has cleared vessel backlogs at the Cape Town Container Terminal.

Transnet’s provincial managing executive, Andiswa Dlanga, said the terminal’s productivity had seen record-breaking shift performances.

“Vessels are now able to berth on arrival after several months of implementing a foolproof plan that kept on being sabotaged by bad weather… The terminal’s productivity has seen record-breaking shift performances.

“In mid-April, there were a few records of over 4 000 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEU) loaded and offloaded within a 24-hour period, with ship working hours going up to 68 against a target of 50.

“In an environment like ours, safety cannot be compromised. For the team to achieve such great feats with zero incidents over an extended period is commendable work,” said Dlanga.

This comes as a specialist research project to quantify the impact of port inefficiency is under way.

Earlier this year, during a briefing to the standing committee on finance, economic opportunities and tourism, it emerged that ships spent nearly a week waiting in the bay, which contributed to a decline in received and shipped containers since 2019.

Finance and Economic Opportunities MEC David Maynier said in a parliamentary question regarding the backlogs, that in order to mitigate congestion, joint steering committees had been established to manage projects such as data integration on exports of different agricultural commodities.

“A new mobile harbour crane was also deployed to the Cape Town Multi-Purpose Terminal in December 2021, which improved performance in this terminal significantly, including a new hydraulic tensioning system which was installed in one berth in the main container terminal during April 2022,” said Maynier.

He said the Department of Economic Development and Tourism and the Department of Agriculture were also closely engaged in interventions to improve port efficiency, and had mobilised fruit exporters at the request of Transnet Port Terminals to make greater use of the night shift, “because there is often spare capacity on that shift”.