Recently the World Bank ranked the world’s container ports. It used two different approaches. First, an administrative approach relying on the knowledge and opinion of experts. On that basis Durban came 351st out of 351 with Ngqura at 349, Port Elizabeth at 348 and Cape Town at 347. Second, it used a statistical approach. On that measure Ngqura came 351st, Durban was at 349, Port Elizabeth at 348 and Cape Town at 347. These were, by definition, by far the lowest rankings in Africa. Mombasa (Kenya) came 43rd with Djibouti at 93rd.
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The result is that Maputo is booming. Its port fees are far lower than South Africa’s and there is no congestion – you can sail your ship into Maputo without delay, offload your cargo and leave the same day. The port now has over 1,000 metres of wharf space and is still expanding: it will double its capacity again in the next few years. The berths have been dredged to allow large displacement ships. The port has modern equipment and now even has a facility for ship repairs and dry-docking.
Maputo’s ambition is clear from the modern warehousing it has built. There is now an 18,000 square metre container depot at nearby Komatipoort plus a 1,000 square metre warehouse.
In addition, Maputo has warehousing to store 1.2 million tonnes of sugar, 250,000 tonnes of grain and 7.5 million tonnes of coal - a facility now being expanded to 11 million tonnes. In addition, a specialised new Fruit Terminal has just been built.
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The really dramatic aspect of Maputo’s growth is the role of Grindrod, a long established Durban logistics company. Indeed, Mozambican port development has turned into a major profit earner for Grindrod. By the end of 2019 more than 21 million tonnes a year were flowing through Maputo, pushing Grindrod’s revenue up to R3.9 billion a year (and profits to R1 billion), with booming exports of magnetite and chrome. Grindrod also operates Matola in Mozambique, a dry bulk handling terminal for coal and magnetite, with nearly 6 million tonnes throughput in 2019.
In addition Grindrod has further entrenched its presence in Mozambique by launching a 60,000 square metre cross-dock facility at the port of Nacala which exports 30,000 tonnes of bagged graphite containers every month. Yet further development is going on in the port of Palma where Grindrod hopes to become a major player in the export of natural gas – potentially an enormous enterprise, currently awaiting the solution of the terrorist problems in northern Mozambique.
Even so, by 2022 Grindrod’s revenue had risen to over R18 billion and profits to R1.66 billion. In a South African economy where slow or no growth was the norm, Grindrod was booming.
The irony of the situation is overwhelming. Ramaphosa and Transnet continue to struggle unavailingly to overcome the terrible mess at South Africa’s ports and yet a Durban company, Grindrod, is showing exactly how such things should be done – though next door in Mozambique.
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