Extended Delays – Port of Brisbane
Dear Customers,
Please see below notice from the Container Transport Alliance of Australia:
There’s little cheer in the Port of Brisbane in the lead up to Christmas with appalling landside service performance at Hutchison’s Brisbane Container Terminal (BCT). The Hutchison BCT is incapable of dealing with its current container volumes and has been woefully caught short with the surge in container volumes during peak season. This has led to serious heavy vehicle safety and fatigue management concerns with excessive truck queuing on Curlew Street and Port Drive waiting for entry into BCT.
In the last few days, truck turnaround times at BCT have blown out to between 5 to 9 hours. Hutchison has also closed its empty container return pool “indefinitely” due to terminal congestion, with empty import containers having to be redirected to other empty de-hire facilities which in themselves are feeling capacity pressures.
This lack of operational performance by Hutchison BCT is totally unacceptable to the container transport industry in Brisbane, and is costing transport companies considerably more in operational and administration costs.
In April 2019, the Infrastructure Charge levied on transport companies by Hutchison BCT for terminal access was $33.10 per laden container (import or export). In July 2020, this increased to $94.78 per laden container. That is an increase of 286%, netting Hutchison hundreds of thousands of extra dollars per annum, supposedly to offset the rising costs of landside operations and to improve terminal productivity.
Container transport operators are direct customers of the terminal paying extremely high access fees for the privilege of doing business with them on behalf of importers and exporters. It’s about time that Hutchison recognised this fact and invested appropriately in terminal improvements, longer hours of operation, additional arrival slots and adequate truck servicing performance.
Hutchison BCT is quick to penalise transporters for late arrivals (wrong zones fees) or “no shows”, yet there are no reciprocal service standards applied to the stevedore.
Also, with the horrendous truck servicing delays, transport operators need to allocate more equipment to handle the container volumes, and run the real risk of missing time slots in other terminals, empty container parks and other nodes in the supply chain.
If service standards do not improve, container transport operators in Brisbane will have no choice but to lobby for mandatory standards to regulate the road transport / stevedore interfaces in the Port of Brisbane, similar to the regulations that exist in Sydney.
On behalf of our alliance companies, CTAA has met with the Port of Brisbane, will be reinforcing the critical safety concerns to the National Heavy Vehicle Regulator (NHVR) to ensure that Hutchison meets its chain of responsibility obligations, and will be raising the issues directly with the Queensland Minister for Transport & Main Roads, Mark Bailey.
Container Transport Alliance Australia (CTAA)
We will provide further updates as information becomes available or for any queries please contact your customer service representative or send your enquiry to [email protected].
