Southern Africa’s ports miss out as global shipping routes shift

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JIMMY MOYAHA: If you remember, a couple of weeks ago we looked at the potential opportunity on the cards for South Africa – in particular as a southern African port with the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. We looked at what this could potentially mean for ships having to reroute past the Cape Good Hope on the way to Europe and the US via Africa. We thought this would be beneficial for African ports and beneficial for African economies.

It seems some countries haven’t been able to take as much advantage of this as we may have previously thought. We are going to take a look at this in more detail with the head of research and development at the Southern African Association of Freight Forwarders, Dr Jacob van Rensburg. He joins us on the line now to see what we make of this.

Dr van Rensburg, lovely having you back on the show. Thanks so much for taking the time. One would think that, with some countries seeing an almost 90% increase in traffic volumes via their ports, we would see this translate almost directly into economic activity, into port activity.

That doesn’t seem to be the case here. What’s going wrong?

JACOB VAN RENZBURG: Well, good evening, Jimmy. It’s a pleasure to be here on your show once again.

It’s a curious case in that there’s a big difference between ‘increased vessel traffic’ and actual ‘increase in economic activity or port calls’. And that’s currently the case that we see.

We must remember that international trade, and especially international shipping, happens via schedules. Typically a port would be one of 10 to 15 ports within an extended schedule – and these schedules last 50 to 70 days, depending on the rotation.

So even though we’ve seen a significant increase, the fact that we’ve seen, as you mentioned at the start, a 90% increase around certain points, there is not a commensurate increase in terms of vessel calls.

Even if we look at our own figures, in the South African context just last year our port throughput in terms of containerised trade was nearly 4%. The bulk throughput as well increased by nearly 4%, but the increase in vessel calls was only 2%.

So it shows you that although there has been some increased activity in and around our ports, we’ve not seen the increased traffic correlating to a direct increase in economic activity.

JIMMY MOYAHA: Now, Dr van Rensburg, let’s look at the commercial side of things. For a lot of these vessels the ports that we are referring to are merely transitory ports that are passing through on their way to their final destination. They don’t necessarily represent final destinations or new destinations. But this doesn’t necessarily mean that there isn’t a commercial incentive for these ports to take advantage of here. How do ports typically position themselves to leverage off transitory vessels, as opposed to those that are coming to deliver goods at final destination points?

JACOB VAN RENZBURG: I think it’s important to consider, first of all, the port model.

In South Africa, and indeed what is the case globally in the rest of the world, typically you have a high port. That’s an important port that acts as a feeder into the economic activity of the country. Think about the large ports such as those in China, Shanghai, for example, and Rotterdam or Bremerhaven in Northern Europe.

But then you also get something called a transshipment hub, and that’s where cargo gets rerouted. Pretty good examples internationally within the aviation industry are places such as Dubai and Doha, which involve a lot of stops. That’s also the case in South Africa.

If we just consider some of the numbers in South Africa – 10 years ago we did 15% of our transshipment hub. And 15% of the cargo used to be transshipment cargo – 15% to 20% to 25%, even. Currently that figure’s down to 13%.

And although we see volume in vessel traffic we don’t see them stopping. It relates to the fact that it’s either serving the economy or it’s a shipment.

If you’re a port handling activity and capacity is high, you will see an increase in transshipment. The converse is true as well. If it’s low, you will see a decrease in transshipment. But that’s just the number one activity in that handling and volume.

Then besides that you can you get the supplementary or ancillary activities such as bunkering, which means refuelling; so stopping for additional fuel.

You get crew changes and other services, and then also dry docks, where they might basically be there for repairs or they might need some work done on some of the machinery on board.

So, if you cannot get the volume, point number one, then you want or at least want to participate in the economic activity, such as those that are mentioned.

And the fact is that South Africa is geographically at a very important position in the world – especially now, starting with these various crises.

These crises that we’ve had: the Red Sea, the Ever Given being stuck in the Suez Canal, and now the Strait of Hormuz closure. So we have an opportunity, most definitely, to increase that participation at levels that we want. The number one, as I mentioned, is volume.

But, if you can’t do that, you want at least to participate in the rest of the economic activities.

JIMMY MOYAHA: Now, Dr van Rensburg, before I let you go, I want to take a look at how we position this opportunity because, many would argue coming via the Cape of Good Hope, coming via South Africa, this increases time, increases costs, delays deliveries – as opposed to going through the likes of the Strait of Hormuz, the likes of the Suez Canal, if we are going to speak specifically about Europe.

But that then doesn’t necessarily mean that this should not be considered for future conversations. We are seeing more and more disruptions, as you alluded to, quite rightly. How then do we position the opportunity set to the international community, such that this does become a permanently viable rerouting destination?

JACOB VAN RENZBURG: I think for South Africa the first thing that I can mention is the fact that we need to get our port models good in terms of who we are and what we do.

If we just consider the fact that in the last 20 years or so the only real property investment in our port system has been at Coega in the Eastern Cape, and that’s actually a port designed to be a transshipment hub for cargo around the Cape of Good Hope.

It seems that we are trying to be everything to everyone. That’s not really where the winds and the opportunities are.

It’s also curious that most of the trade happens east-west, so we don’t see that much trade that comes around us.

If we just think about the containerised space, only 2% in the world’s oil touches South African call ports. In the bulk space it is about 5%.

Now, despite these low numbers, the increase in traffic provides an opportunity.

So what we can do is invest in our ports, invest in our equipment, collaborate and share data. These things have happened.

I think the important thing to note is that we’ve bottomed out and we’ve turned the corner for sure, but a lot of work still needs to be done – and that requires all stakeholders.

We’ve recently seen the concession with a joint venture between Transnet and International Container Terminal Services, Inc [ICTSI] at the Durban Gateway Terminal, the previous Pier 2. That’s seemingly reaping some benefits.

We’ve seen an increase in Q1 year-on-year of 6.7% by my estimation.

So there are some green shoots, for sure. But what we must do is continue to invest in equipment, which we’ve done, continue to upskill our libraries, continue to use digital and best practices on the ground and integrate the entire system.

An important thing is also the linkages with the hinterland. That’s something where we need rail, we need roads, and we need coordination between the [elements of] the entire system.

Some positives, but a lot of opportunity – and these we need to take.

JIMMY MOYAHA: Definitely a lot of opportunities still left on the table that we can make use of or take advantage of. We just need to make sure we put our best feet forward in that respect.

We’ll leave the conversation on that note. Dr Jacob van Rensburg of the Southern African Association for Freight Forwarders joined us to look at how we’re not taking as much advantage of the port situations as we could.