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Containers stranded at Sydney port
2009/2/20
More than a third of the trucks using the Patrick terminal at Port Botany are breaching the port''s vehicle time limit, and most shipping containers are sitting at the port for two days or more, the Sydney Morning Herald reported.
Sydney Ports figures from the first day of a 14-day survey of operations at Port Botany suggest Patrick, its competitor DP World and the trucking companies servicing the port are struggling to cope with the containers pouring in.
This is constricting the flow of goods to and from NSW, and contributing to the long lines of trucks that regularly spill out of the terminal and into the streets of Botany.
On Monday, 35 percent of the trucks entering the Patrick terminal were not processed within the 60-minute timeframe agreed upon by Sydney Ports and the stevedore companies.
This was a result of the inefficiency of the terminal and the fact 18 percent of trucks arrived early, late or without a booking.
Only 17 percent of trucks breached vehicle processing time limits at the DP World terminal, which had an average processing time of 44.9 minutes. But 25 percent of trucks arrived early, late or without a booking.
The chief executive of Shipping Australia, Llew Russell, said the figures were unacceptable but not surprising. "There are a lot of problems at the Port Botany terminals - the workforce, the inefficiency, the vehicle booking system," he said.
"Trucking companies say they are turning up to collect the containers but the timeslots aren''t there when they need them to be. From a shipping perspective, we need a quick turnaround and we''re not getting that."
The first day of the trial also revealed the length of time imported goods are spending on the docks before being taken to warehouses across the city.
At the Patrick terminal, about 750 containers had been sitting on the dock for two days or more, and a significant proportion were waiting three and four days. Sixty containers had been waiting more than a week.
There were also delays at the smaller DP World terminal, where 335 containers had spent two days on the dock and 143 had not moved for four days.
A spokeswoman for Patrick said trucking companies were to blame because they were failing to collect the containers after they were unloaded. "Once a container is discharged it is the responsibility of the customer," she said.
But Mike Moylan, of the Australian Trucking Association, said the terminals were failing to move trucks through efficiently. "It''s the terminal''s failure to service the vehicles within the agreed parameters."
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2009/2/20