Cape Town Container Terminal News

CMA CGM, the world's fourth-largest container shipping line, will impose emergency congestion surcharges at Cape Town port in July due to disruptions caused by the coronavirus, it has told customers.From July 1 until further notice, it will impose a surcharge of $550 for 20-foot containers and reefers and a $1,100 surcharge for 40-foot containers and reefers, CMA said in the letter dated June 17 that was seen by Reuters.Western Cape province, which includes Cape Town, is the epicenter of South Africa's coronavirus outbreak…

South Africa’s state-owned freight transport and logistics giant Transnet Limited today celebrated a significant milestone in its R5.4 billion expansion of the Cape Town Container Terminal. On completion, the five-year project will double the terminal’s capacity to 1, 4 million TEUs per annum. Speaking at a ceremony attended by Public Enterprises Minister, Mr Malusi Gigaba, Group Chief Executive, Mr Brian Molefe, announced the company had completed major dredging, deepening and refurbishment work at Berth 602, the second of four berths to undergo such upgrades.

[CAPE TOWN – 31 March 2011]  The end of March should see a subsiding of the vicious south-easterly wind that has plagued the Cape and put Cape Town container terminal under serious pressure to keep cargo moving over the last few months. Just the first three months of 2011 have already seen 62 separate wind stoppages totalling 551 hours at the terminal – more than half of 2010’s full total of 964 hours lost to wind over 83 separate occasions. Around nine days or 219 hours were lost to wind in January, 220 hours in February and 101 in March.

Transnet Port Terminal reports that its R5.6 billion, five-year investment plan aimed at increasing the capacity of the Cape Town Container Terminal is progressing according to schedule. Under its reconfiguration program on the long quay, the container stacking yard is being converted from a straddle carrier operation to a rubber tired gantry (RTG) operation. Over the past six months, 16 RTGs have been phased into the terminal and a further 16 RTGs are earmarked to arrive in the second half of this year.

The Cape Town container terminal’s R4.2 billion expansion project has seen several milestones for the port in recent months, and the upward trajectory is set to continue as the country’s second largest container terminal ramps up its capacity over the next five years. Oscar Borchards, Transnet Port Terminals’ Business Unit Executive, said ongoing expansion works and procurement of state-of-the-art equipment would ensure the facility is better prepared when the global market picks up again in the near future. “In May we took delivery of four rubber-tyred gantry cranes (RTGs) manufactured by Kalmar Industries. By the end of the expansion programme…