Patrick Terminals chief executive Michael Jovicic says port access charges pay for
infrastructure and maintenance. (Photo credit – ABC News: Sue Lannin)
Trucking charges at Australian container ports are surging and consumers may foot the bill, according to media reports today.
Based at one of Australia’s biggest container ports, Port Botany in Sydney, ACFS Port Logistics has become the biggest privately-owned container logistics firm in Australia. Arthur Tzaneros and his father set up their trucking firm back in 2005 but, he has told ABC News, he’s never seen stevedore charges so high – having increased five-fold since 2017. The ACFS chief executive is worried about the future of his business.
Figures from the transport industry group, the Container Transport Alliance Australia (CTAA), show the average fee for unloading an import container off a ship has surged from an average of $24.52 in mid-2017 to $121.87 in March 2021 in New South Wales. In Queensland the fee has jumped from $34.63 to $118.59, and in Victoria it has surged from $27.07 to $128.51 in less than four years.
Patrick introduces long vehicle charge
Patrick Terminals has now introduced a new fee for longer vehicles, known as high productivity vehicles, in Sydney and Brisbane.The charge of $50 per long vehicle has been slammed by the CTAA as a ‘productivity tax’ and the transport group is calling for it to be abandoned, saying it can take at least an hour to load a long vehicle into berth.
ACCC says consumers and exporters foot the bill
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) said port operators saw revenue and profit margins rise for 2019-20, despite the global pandemic causing the largest contraction in container volumes in a decade, mainly because of the stevedores increasing their terminal access charges.
Revenue from the fees charged to transport firms rose by nearly 52% compared to 2018-19. ACCC chairman Rod Sims is quoted as saying the charges imposed by the port operators were ‘unconstrained.’ The ACCC Container Stevedoring Monitoring Report for 2019-20 found that overall revenue for the industry rose to $1.4 billion, the highest in ten years, with revenue from shipping companies falling, but earnings rising from transport and other industries. Of the $1.4 billion, stevedores earned $256 million from the unregulated terminal access fees.
Calls for Senate inquiry into ‘supply chain bullying’
The transport industry is calling for a Senate inquiry into the higher charges imposed by port operators, saying the rising costs have forced trucking companies to cut wages and lay off staff, putting safety on the roads at risk. The Transport Workers Union wants an independent inquiry set up to assess higher prices, arguing that “this is really supply chain bullying.†Importers and exporters have also called on regulators to intervene.
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