By: OrePulse

Transport Minister Barbara Creecy has called for a detailed recovery plan at Durban Gateway Terminal (DGT) after an inspection last Friday found vessels still waiting an average of 8.3 days to berth, far above the port's 24-hour target, according to officials who took part in the visit.

Creecy acknowledged that waiting times had come down but said they remained unacceptably high, and said she did not expect the terminal to reach the 24-hour benchmark immediately. She asked the terminal's operating partners to produce a specific recovery plan. The inspection briefing included DGT chief executive Javier Lancha de Micheo and Transnet chairperson Solly Letsoalo.

The inspection came in the same week that South Africa's cabinet approved separating the Transnet National Ports Authority from the wider Transnet group, part of a broader push to restructure the country's ports system.

Officials outlined several measures meant to ease the backlog at DGT. A new digital truck-booking system is due to launch next week, following discussions with trucking associations, to replace the current appointment process. Rail capacity between the terminal and the Bayhead back-of-port facility is being increased from two or three trains a day to about five. The terminal is also moving to a mixed yard-operating model that combines straddle carriers, internal haulers, reach stackers and empty-container handlers. Officials said the plan combines near-term equipment fixes with longer-term capacity additions rather than a single remedy for the backlog.

On equipment, three straddle carriers were refurbished in September, and ten more are scheduled to return to service from December. Quay-crane maintenance work is due to begin in November, and twelve new straddle carriers are expected to arrive by July 2027. The terminal's operator, ICTSI, has committed about 737 million rand in immediate investment, rising to 1.2 billion rand over two years, including 16 new rubber-tyred gantry cranes for the south quay.

Despite the measures, shipping line Maersk has reported that vessels are waiting as long as 16 days to berth at DGT's Pier 2, compared with seven to eight days at Pier 1.

Durban is southern Africa's busiest container port, and delays there ripple across regional supply chains. A World Bank index that benchmarks port efficiency worldwide ranked Durban 398th out of the ports it covered in 2024, though a later edition of the same index found Durban had posted the largest year-over-year improvement of any port it measured.

This is not a new problem for the port. Durban suffered a fresh wave of congestion in August, when ships waited eight to 12 days for a berth, and some carriers reported delays running as long as 20 days following a switch to a new terminal operating system. The continued delays carry knock-on costs for shippers using the port, which handles the bulk of South Africa's containerized trade.