“When a global motor company cuts back on making cars, it cancels its orders for catalytic converters. Madam Speaker, this firm making catalytic converters is not in Detroit or in Shanghai, it is here in the Eastern Cape. The mine producing the platinum that goes into that converter is near Rustenburg. The worker in the factory in Uitenhage and the mineworker in Rustenburg are now without work. And the woman who runs the little stall selling vegetables outside the mine is making less money each passing week. And their families, all of them, face a future made more precarious by the vagaries of global finance.”
[Trevor Manuel, Minister of Finance, Budget 2009]

But there are opportunities even in a time of crisis.
This is the sentiment expressed in three annual surveys carried out by PricewaterhouseCoopers, Frost & Sullivan (commissioned by Barloworld Logistics) and the Industrial Development Corporation. And it was again reiterated by Palello Lebako of Union Carriage & Wagon (UCW) - the company building Gauteng’s “golden train” – who said in his opening address at the Harbours & Rail conference in Cape Town earlier this month, “the rail and port industries have created exceptional opportunities that lie ahead”… “Government has recognised it is important for job creation that investment in rail and harbours is crucial for this economy”…
The International Monetary Fund’s economic forecast is that developing countries will grow by 3,3% this year, while advanced economies will shrink by 2%. The UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) forecasts exports from developing countries could fall by 9,2% in 2009, but that greater South-South cooperation (Brazil-India-South Africa) will help developing countries cope with the crisis. The World Trade Organisation (WTO) has also met to assess how far the financial crisis has encouraged protectionism and says that reaching a global trade deal would be a relatively easy way to help ease the economic crisis.
There is no doubt that the entire supply chain is feeling the pressure of the global economic downturn. Perhaps this phase should be viewed as a time of respite to consider the opportunities. Right now it seems the only thing to do really is to batten down the hatches and ride out the storm until the sun breaks through the clouds.

• By the way, there was little response to an email inviting contributions to a ship building and shipyards report. However responses to the article about ship repairer activities in Cape Town were both favourable and disapproving. Nobody was prepared to commit words to paper but I received a phone call from DCD Dorbyl’s PR agency to tell me they had been instructed not to send SA Shipping News any further contributions in future. I was also put right that it had been PricewaterhouseCoopers, not Atlantis Marine Projects, who had been appointed by TNPA to conduct a feasibility study with a view to concessioning the drydocks and syncrolift (excluding A Berth).
This study has apparently been completed.

Editor

Cover Story

Falling trade and lack of credit has impacted on shipping freight movements resulting in scores of vessels now lying idle and many more ships likely to join them when their current contracts are complete. Hire rates have reached new lows and ocean carriers’ are pressing for steeper discounts to compensate for collapsing liner freight rates. Recently though there has been a move to reroute very large container ships such as the MSC Lisbon and Elly Maersk around the Cape on the east-bound voyages to avoid the high fees for using the Suez Canal and the high insurance rates for risking the Gulf of Aden.