Container Transporters Call for Recognition of Ongoing Port Delays

Container transport operators across Australia are urging their customers to fully appreciate operational realities as container logistics chains in every capital city container port in Australia try to recover from cargo delays caused by industrial actions, port protests, traffic congestion and weather-related events, and now a heavy container freight demand.

CTAA Director, Neil Chambers observed that “While DP World Australia has reached an in-principle agreement with the maritime union on the national clauses in a new Enterprise Agreement (EA) resulting in an end to protected industrial actions, the backlog of containers in all DP World terminals persists.”

“Vessel berthing delays continue (still between 7 to 14 days), which has a knock-on effect to other terminals in all States as vessel schedule reliability continues to struggle.”

“Terminal scheduled and unscheduled maintenance and IT outages are also contributing to delays. For instance, there have been progressive maintenance issues with the Automated Stacking Cranes (ASCs) at DP World Brisbane Terminal, and maintenance outages at Victoria International Container Terminal (VICT) in Melbourne.”

“DP World Fremantle Terminal has also closed for landside Receival & Delivery operations for all of the day shift on Monday, 12 February due to “unforeseen circumstances”.”

“The threat of more Pro-Palestinian protests targeting Zim Line vessels is ever present, following the closure of VICT in Melbourne for more than three days. This has prompted many industry representative bodies, including CTAA, to call on Governments to ensure that ports are recognised as “critical infrastructure” and strongly protected from the highly negative impacts of such disruptive actions.”

“On top of all of this now, the majority of the container terminals in Australia have an up-tick in vessel arrivals, import discharges and export receivals over the coming weeks.”

“One of the reasons for this is an increase in import freight ordered from Asia prior to the commencement of the Lunar New Year (before 10 February) and continued strong containerised export demand.”

“Importers, exporters and freight forwarders need to appreciate that the consequences of the continued turmoil
and increased freight demand for container transport operators include:

• Higher operating costs, including more overtime for drivers and operations staff as extra night and weekend shifts become necessary to utilise all terminal slot availability.
• Higher staging and handling costs through transport yards as export receival dates chop & change, and imports need to be recovered from terminals before storage is incurred.
• Growing congestion at empty container parks resulting in delays to import de-hire and export pick-ups. “As usual, container transport operators will work diligently to try to meet their customers’ demands.”

“However, there shouldn’t be a false sense that landside container logistics operations have returned to some form of “normal” … they haven’t – costs are still higher (by between 15% to 20%), and delays persist.” Neil Chambers concluded.

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