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Two of South Africa's largest freight industry bodies have put a five-point recovery compact on the table for the Durban Gateway Terminal, built around a single daily coordination structure and one public dashboard of numbers everybody agrees on.
Supply Chain Management
27 August 2026 • 5 min read
Average Durban port call time has gone from under five days in late June to more than twelve days by late August. Monthly berth calls fell from 34 in May to 19 in August. SAFLA and the RFA are not asking for sympathy — they are asking for published targets, published reasons for cancellations, and a defined process for relief on demurrage that cargo owners did not cause.
The South African Freight and Logistics Association and the Road Freight Association set out the position plainly. In July, vessels at the Durban Gateway Terminal averaged 80 hours at anchorage and 106 hours at berth. After the mid-August cut-over to the NAVIS N4 terminal operating system, weekly throughput fell 26% and reported terminal waits reached eight to twelve days.
The landside picture has moved in step. Time transporters spend inside the port precinct per visit has risen by more than 50% over the past three months, and Bayhead Road transit times have been climbing steadily since January. For a road operator that is not an inconvenience — it is a direct reduction in the number of turns a truck can complete in a shift, on a cost base that does not shrink to match.
Berth calls, 2026: 34 in May, falling to 19 in August — while average port call time rose from under five days in late June to more than twelve days by late August. (Source: SAFLA / RFA via Engineering News, August 2026)
The five proposed actions are deliberately operational rather than political. First, a single recovery structure in which the terminal, Transnet entities, eThekwini, shipping lines, transporters, labour and industry bodies meet daily, with government facilitating rather than managing. Second, a public 30-day recovery plan with daily targets and one public dashboard covering vessel waiting and berth times, crane productivity, equipment availability, system stability, yard utilisation, dwell, truck turnaround and rail evacuation.
Third, stabilisation of systems, equipment and yard, with NAVIS Hypercare retained until cargo-flow thresholds hold, backed by a straddle and crane reliability programme and accelerated evacuation of long-dwell boxes. Fourth, a coordinated landside plan: appointment releases aligned to real capacity, published slot schedules, published reasons for cancellations, disclosure of any preferential access, and fast-tracked truck staging. Fifth, fair commercial treatment — transparent prioritisation of reefers and perishables, and published relief processes for storage, demurrage and detention where the delay lies beyond the cargo owner's control.
Strip away the structure and this is a dispute about measurement. During a disruption, every party holds a different dataset and every dataset supports a different account of who is at fault. The terminal has its productivity figures, the lines have their schedule reliability, transporters have their gate times, and cargo owners have an invoice for storage they cannot contest because they cannot see the underlying cause. A single published dashboard removes the ambiguity that currently protects everyone, which is exactly why it is the hardest of the five asks.
The accountability question is equally pointed. ICTSI took operational responsibility for DGT on 1 January 2026 under a 25-year partnership with Transnet, inheriting long-standing infrastructure, yard, road and rail constraints alongside pre-handover investment in 20 new straddle carriers and four ship-to-shore cranes. SAFLA and the RFA note that the concession was granted under defined performance commitments, and that Transnet and the shipping lines therefore hold the standing to bring the terminal to account. As SAFLA executive officer David Logan put it, the cost of failure "runs well beyond storage and demurrage, as production lines wait for inputs, emergency airfreight is used at high cost, and trucks stand without bookings."
Whether or not the compact is adopted, start building your own evidence file now: timestamped gate-in and gate-out records, cancelled slot references, and the standing cost per truck-hour in the precinct. That documentation is what turns a demurrage claim into a negotiation. For cargo routed through Durban into Zambia, Zimbabwe, Botswana and beyond, twelve-day port call times make a genuine second-gateway costing exercise overdue — and for anyone renewing a customer contract this quarter, port-delay risk needs to sit in the contract explicitly rather than being absorbed silently in the rate.
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Visit Laaimylorrie.com| About the Author | |
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Andre Klynsmith Entrepreneur & Technology Enthusiast Andre's expertise spans technology, blockchain, transport, and logistics -- with a passion for innovation and driving positive change across industries. |
| Source: Engineering News — Safla, RFA call for unified, public Durban Gateway Terminal recovery plan View source › | 26 August 2026 |
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