What sparked the meeting
South Africa's main container gateway has been slowing, so Transport Minister Barbara Creecy sat down with International Container Terminal Services Inc. officials to talk through the rising delays. The Durban Gateway Terminal handles nearly half of the country's container volumes, and Creecy said from Durban on Friday that ships are now spending close to six days at anchor on average, about twice as long as before ICTSI assumed operations.
Why ships are waiting longer
Creecy linked the bottlenecks mostly to the rollout of a command and control Navis terminal operating system and to delays in refurbishing or replacing some loading equipment. As she put it: "In the long term, this is what's going to give us the volumes that we want. But the real issue is, in the meantime, when you're dealing with the teething problems, how are you responding to your customers?" She added that ICTSI should improve its public communication. The Cape Chamber of Commerce said the holdups have led some ships to bypass Durban, which has disrupted other South African port operations.
How we got here and who is involved
ICTSI was appointed to operate the terminal in partnership with state-owned Transnet SOC Ltd., but the contract was delayed by a lawsuit from A.P. Moller-Maersk A/S that challenged the bidding process. ICTSI did not provide an immediate reply to a request for comment sent by email, and calls to its offices after working hours were not answered. Fixing the problems matters for Transnet, which is trying to lift its performance with a strategy that relies more on public-private partnerships.
Even when infrastructure stories dominate the news, disciplined contributions pay off over time, get the free Always Be Buying E-Book
What upgrades are planned
Creecy said Durban Gateway Terminal is starting with a 737 million rand investment to upgrade equipment, targeting a 40% boost in capacity to 2.8 million containers by 2030. For anyone with a stake in trade, shipping or logistics-heavy businesses, operational reliability at a port that moves a big slice of South Africa's boxes can influence timelines and planning in very real ways.
As readers consider long horizons, learn a simple investing routine by downloading our free Always Be Buying E-Book
