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CTAA has produced a Notice to Industry summarising the current constrained landside interface situation at Patrick's Port Botany Terminal.
Continuing Protected Industrial Actions (PIAs), high container trade volumes, a weather event, and decisions by Patrick to reduce rail services and to not waive import storage charges are all having negative impacts on container transport operators and their import & export customers.
The hard-line decision by Patrick to not waive import storage charges, despite reduced terminal Vehicle Booking System (VBS) slot capacity due to current union industrial actions, is seen as unfair.
The Protected Industrial Actions (PIAs) at Patrick Port Botany continue to occur because Patrick has not yet reached agreement with its workforce and the union on a new Enterprise Agreement.
Patrick's competitor stevedores in NSW, DP World Australia and Hutchison Ports, have each now settled their new agreements with their respective workforces. Patrick Terminals has not.
It is confronting for Patrick not to accept some level of culpability for the current industrial situation. Instead, innocent importers and their transport providers will likely incur storage charges, supply chain delays and added operational costs.
Exporters too have expressed significant concerns about the added logistics costs resulting from the reduction in rail services and the need to revert to road operations to meet export vessel receival window cut-offs.
Transport operators are working closely with their import and export customers to try to avoid as much landside logistics "pain" as possible. Inevitably though, this situation will likely persist while the industrial turmoil continues.
Download a CTAA Notice to Industry with further information: HERE |