Speaking at a South African Chamber of Commerce and Industry annual convention, Transnet's general manager for capital projects and technology, Logan Naidoo, said that projections are that container volumes will grow 10% year-on-year over five years (i.e. per year), bulk volumes 9% and automotive goods 5%.
He told I-Net Bridge that while growth was at -3.3% in 2009/10, it is projected to go up to +3.7% in 2010/11.
Naidoo said that while there may be gloom in the economy, "if we do nothing we will fall deeper into recession". He said the key now was to position South Africa to be more competitive.
Transnet has an R80 billion five year rolling development drive, with R6.6 billion of this currently assigned to port terminals.
Naidoo said R800 million was going to restore Richards Bay's port, with R500 million already spent on refurbishing.
He said that the new terminal at Ngqura started operating two weeks ago, with vessels coming through and productivity levels already up to the levels of the Durban port.
Speaking to the businessmen present, Naidoo said one area where he saw opportunities for them was in maintenance of the equipment at the terminals, rather than trying to manufacture specialised terminal goods. This would entail things like spare parts, tyres and oil.
Naidoo said research done by Transnet has determined that the throughput at Durban will decline to 52% by 2028/29 from 67% currently, thus making Durban very much a strategic plan as these volumes would be very high.
Ngqura, though, is set to increase throughput to 29% in twenty years from 2% in 2009/10. Cape Town will go from 21% to 16% and Port Elizabeth from 10% to 3%.
"South Africa is an attractive platform for sub-Saharan African and global trans-shipments," he said.
"The new terminal at Ngqura has started to attract regional and trans-shipment volumes," concluded Naidoo.
Durban is currently the 42nd largest port in the world.
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