Maersk Line has published a report that ranks container terminals in Sub-Saharan Africa according to berth productivity. Pier 2 at Durban Container Terminal comes top by some distance, with 45.2 moves per hour, 10.9 moves per hour better than Pier 1 at the same facility.
However, Pier 2 is the modern facility, with handling capacity of 2.9M TEU/year and recently improved its draught of 16m.
It is perhaps surprising that there are three Indian Ocean terminals among the top 10 – in Madagascar, Port Louis and Port Réunion. Although used as transhipment terminals, such ports are not affected by a backlog of containers waiting for long periods to be transported by land to neighbouring landlocked states, in contrast to most ports in west and east Africa. By contrast, although efficiency at Mombasa, Dar es Salaam and Lagos is generally improving, all three cities are notable by their absence from the table.
African container terminals are subject to regular criticism, but 10 ports now achieve an average of more than 30 berth moves per hour, although further improvements are obviously required. The new Ngqura Container Terminal is ranked below wellestablished Cape Town, despite operating well below capacity with brand new cargo handling equipment.
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This complete item is approximately 300 words in length, and appeared in the December 2014 issue of WorldCargo News, on page 4. To access this issue download the PDF here.
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