Supply chain gridlock ‘is slowly unwinding’

BLOCKAGES remain in South Africa’s supply chain system following the cyberattack on Transnet and the civil unrest that were delaying cargoes and adding to the costs of moving freight, the Western Cape director of the South African Association of Freight Forwarders (SAAFF), Mike Walwyn, said yesterday.

Walwyn said he knew of 12 ships that had simply bypassed their South African destination ports last week because of the delays, and in these instances the cargoes would either be offloaded at another local port or be offloaded at a port in another country, where a vessel destined for South Africa would on-load it a later stage. Both scenarios would result in delays and additional costs.

Export pack-houses were full to capacity because of the delays, and refrigerated containers needed to be plugged in at extra cost to preserve the produce, or the crops were being picked later than they should.

Imported meat pack-houses in Durban had been looted and damaged, and the meat was having to be offloaded by vessels in other local ports, also resulting in delays and additional costs.

“There are a myriad of other examples I could name. But the system is recovering slowly. Transnet’s main operating systems are up and running, although some of its other systems are not yet up,” he said.

SAAFF chairperson Dr Juanita Maree said the massive disruptions to supply chains in recent weeks had led to a loss of trust, reputational damage, falling investor confidence, companies choosing to avoid using the ports, loss of jobs and slow economic growth.

The cyberattack on Transnet, the latest supply chain disruption, had brought the ports to a halt and resulted in a virtual standstill for 12 days.

Maree said the association had played an active role, with stakeholders, in tackling the challenges to restore some normality to the supply chain.

A Supply Chain Security Working Group, co-chaired by the SAAFF and the Department of Trade, Industry and Competition and comprising stakeholders from the private and public sectors, had been set up to identify solutions.

The working group met daily to track and monitor progress. The SAAFF was also driving the development of a master plan to ensure contingency plans were put in place where there were none, which would be developed into a strategic, longer-term logistics master plan.

Among the other initiatives the SAAFF had taken was to lobby, with other industry associations, for more police and South African National Defence Force presence at critical hot spots on key transport corridors.

Maree said a key lesson was that businesses, government departments and state-owned entities needed to have contingency plans in place to allow an organisation to return to its daily operations as quickly as possible after an unforeseen event.