The Citrus Growers Association of Southern Africa (CGA) yesterday welcomed the progress made to return Durban port to full functionality ahead of the 2022 citrus export season after catastrophic KwaZulu-Natal floods.
Justin Chadwick, the CEO of CGA, said the it had been engaging closely with the government and stakeholders across the citrus value chain on efforts to return the Durban port back to full functionality, following the catastrophic rains and flooding in KwaZulu-Natal.
“We are pleased that there has been significant progress achieved over the past week with the Department of Public Enterprises (DPE), Transnet and eThekwini Municipality working speedily to repair the extensive damage caused by the flooding,” Chadwick said.
Government entities had managed to reopen Bayhead Road, which is the main feeder road to the container port terminals.
The flooding caused a length of two ingoing lanes of Bayhead Road, over a canal, to wash away. The outgoing lanes had been assessed in terms of safety and had been reopened to enable cargo to move in and out of the port.
Work on the ingoing lanes was proceeding well ahead of schedule, the CGA said, adding what was predicted to take a few months to achieve was now expected to take a few weeks.
However, while the port might be restored to a degree of functionality, it would still be some time before the logistics system returned to some form of normality, Chadwick said.
“In particular, the container depots were hard hit by the might of the floods with containers drifting on freeways, container stacks collapsing to the ground and containers scattered around the depots,” he said.
The CGA said the latest information provided to them indicated that three of the ten container depots were fully functional. The rest were being worked hard on to get them back into operation, particularly by getting water and electricity reconnected as was essential for exporting citrus.
For other companies, there was longer-term structural work that needed to be done to their depots. Many containers had also been damaged and assessments were being conducted to determine how many could be used and how many would be decommissioned.
This meant there could likely be a shortage of containers, which would be further exacerbated by recent delays when it comes to the evacuation of imports from containers and vessels bypassing Durban port altogether.
The CGA said thankfully, most cold stores were not structurally damaged by the floods, and continued to receive fruit, which meant there was still capacity to receive more fruit.
The CGA said it would continue monitoring the situation to ensure that fruit arriving in Durban could be stored and had also advised exporters to liaise with their cold stores before trucking fruit to Durban.
Unfortunately, the rail infrastructure had been severely damaged, and at the moment rail was not an option. Transnet Freight Rail was working hard at repairing the infrastructure, which would in itself take some time before the network was repaired and functional.
Critically, Maydon Wharf Fruit terminals and Fresh Produce Terminals were both functioning normally, which meant that specialised reefer vessels could be loaded and despatched with no delay.
The CGA thanked all role-players involved in ensuring the speedy rehabilitation of the Durban port and the rest of the logistics chain impacted by the floods.
“It has truly been a monumental effort and a great example of stakeholders working together to ensure imports and exports continue to flow in and out of the country.”
“However, there is a lot of repair work that still needs to be done. The CGA will continue to hold regular meetings with government and all supply chain partners in order to share insights and provide updates as the industry heads into the 2022 citrus export season,” Chadwick said.
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