Roy Cokayne
The motor manufacturing industry and Transnet have established a joint task team to undertake a number of projects aimed at improving the competitiveness of the automotive sector.
Evan Dold, the chairman of the OEM Purchasing Council at the National Association of Automobile Manufacturers Association of SA (Naamsa), said on Wednesday that agreement was reached last month between Transnet and Naamsa to establish the teams to undertake a number of short-term projects of not more than six months duration, and some medium- to long-term tasks.
Dold told an Automotive Industry Development Centre conference in Boksburg that this was not an initiative of the purchasing council but he was mentioning it because logistics was a critical area for the industry in terms of it becoming more competitive.
He said that one of the short-term projects was to resolve disruptions in Durban port related to Navis, the new container management system introduced a few months ago.
“There have been some hiccups. It has contributed – and the weather has too – to massive congestion and massive delays in Durban port.
“All of that is making us more expensive and less competitive. It has to be resolved fast,” Dold said.
Other short-term projects related to increasing the volume of vehicles transported by rail rather than by road and to get car carriers off the roads.
There was also a need to implement port efficiency targets to measure how efficient local port operations were compared with global port best practices, and a requirement to reduce cargo dues on inbound and outbound vehicles, he said.
In the longer term, Dold said that it was imperative to find ways of reducing costs in the Transnet value chain.
There was also a need to introduce new rail car wagons, strengthen the Gauteng-Eastern Cape corridor and reduce cargo dues on containers.
Dold said that a lot of work was happening on the Gauteng-Eastern Cape corridor between various national and provincial governments with Naamsa’s involvement, with a focus on building up the car terminal in Port Elizabeth.
He referred to another project, which was embryonic at this stage. It was initiated within General Motors South Africa’s supplier council on a pilot project basis, but was now in planning rather than implementation mode after the idea was presented to the Naamsa supply chain sub-committee.
Dold said that the idea was for principal suppliers to combine their business on common routes to get full container loads. This would allow a group of suppliers to negotiate a single shipping contract, thereby increasing shipping frequencies and lowering their freight rates.
Dold noted that there seemed to be a good level of interest in this initiative but it would first be tested with a pilot project or two.