Dear Customers,
We have been monitoring our local port performance over the past month and can confirm that there has been some improvement at our SA ports in terms of smaller eta movements, with vessels out at anchorage for shorter periods of time and our berthing schedules extended to provide at least the next 10 days of berthing plan. The festive period certainly brought about the normal challenges of delays due to port congestion and truckers standing in long queues to uplift units prior to long weekends but overall, a positive improvement.
In terms of operational delays. Durban Pier 2 experienced straddle issues and heavy rain fall over the past 2 weeks causing some delays and Cape town port was on standby this week due to severe weather conditions. Vessels therefore discharged a lot slower.
Berthing Delays:
Great improvement in this regard, with less vessels currently waiting outside anchorage at the various ports as shown below:
We also include here the latest Anchorage report compiled by Transnet showing the vessels waiting outside and their planned berthing slot
Although some progress over the month of December, we still do not foresee the congestion issue being solved completely and forecast that current berthing delays will still be a challenge going into 2024 – on that basis we once again recommend that at least two weeks additional lead time is placed into all planning and ordering.
Should you have any questions around this please do reach out to one of us and we wish all our valued customer a Happy New Year and all success for 2024.