South Africa’s most important port takes six days to handle a single ship

South Africa’s Transport Minister Barbara Creecy met with officials from a firm headed by Filipino billionaire Enrique Razon to discuss worsening delays at the country’s busiest container terminal.

International Container Terminal Services Inc. was appointed the operator of the Durban Gateway Terminal in partnership with state-owned logistics company Transnet.

The contract to run the facility, which handles nearly half the country’s container volumes, was delayed by a lawsuit brought by A.P. Moller-Maersk that challenged how the bidding process was handled.

The average time at anchorage for vessels using the terminal has roughly doubled to nearly six days since ICTSI took over, Creecy said in a phone interview from the eastern city of Durban on Friday.

That was largely due to the implementation of a command-and-control Navis terminal operating system, and delays in the refurbishment or replacement of some loading equipment, she said. 

“In the long term, this is what’s going to give us the volumes that we want,” Creecy said.

“But the real issue is, in the meantime, when you’re dealing with the teething problems, how are you responding to your customers?” Creecy said, adding that ICTSI needed to improve its public communication.

ICTSI didn’t immediately respond to an email seeking comment or pick up a call made to its offices after working hours.

The delays have caused ships to bypass Durban, disrupting other South African port operations, according to the Cape Chamber of Commerce. 

Resolving the issues is especially important for Transnet as it attempts to improve its own performance by implementing a strategy that relies increasingly on public-private partnerships.

DGT is initially investing R737 million to upgrade equipment and increase capacity at the terminal by 40% to 2.8 million twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs), or containers, by 2030, Creecy said.