Thesis (MBA)--University of Stellenbosch, 2010. / According to the 6th State of Logistics Survey for South Africa (2009: 5), logistics costs for 2008
reached R339 billion, equivalent to 14.7% of GDP. Transport represents 50.4% of these logistics
costs compared to a world average of 39%. This major gap between South Africa and the world
average shows that there are inefficiencies in this domain that need improvement.
This report focuses on the issues faced by the port of Cape Town, the benefits that could be
generated by the implementation of an inland port in the Cape Town area and the key success
factors for this implementation.
The Centre for Supply Chain Management of the University of Stellenbosch created a forecast
model for South Africa and expects a demand of over 2.4 million Twenty-foot Equivalent units
(TEUs) in 2039 for the port of Cape Town with a current throughput of 740,000. In 2012, this
capacity will reach 1.4 million TEUs thanks to an on-going project that includes the widening of
berth, investment in equipment, training of operators and a better utilization of the available storage
space. The port therefore has to find a solution to increase a throughput on the long term.
Along with capacity, the port is facing other issues such as low productivity, poor infrastructure and
congestion in the port area that causes increased delivery time and trucking costs.
The inland port has to bring solutions to these issues. Capacity must be addressed with a large
piece of land that can accommodate growing volumes and also large investment in equipment and
training to increase the productivity and therefore the throughput of the supply chain. In order to
decrease congestion in the port area, the inland port has to be located out of the city in an area
that can sustain growing traffic.
Belcon is a Transnet Freight Rail facility located in Bellville that can offer sufficient storage capacity
in a low traffic area. Investments must be made in order to increase its throughput but it has the
potential to absorb a large part of the flows going through the port of Cape Town and a
management with the will to develop the inland port concept.
At the same time, this inland port is an opportunity to develop intermodal transport for a more
sustainable transport system in South Africa. Belcon being a TFR terminal, it is the best location to
implement this inland port and offer a competitive intermodal solution for the stakeholders of the
South African transport industry.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:sun/oai:scholar.sun.ac.za:10019.1/8477 |
| Date | 12 1900 |
| Creators | Richer, Raphael |
| Contributors | Von Leipzig, Konrad, University of Stellenbosch. Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences. Graduate School of Business. |
| Publisher | Stellenbosch : University of Stellenbosch |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | en_ZA |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Rights | University of Stellenbosch |
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