South Africa counts cost as strike ends

Container export terminals at ports in South Africa are expected to run at full capacity again from this weekend after a devastating two-week strike that caused serious disruption to the country’s fresh produce export programmes.

But while differences between the striking unions and the country's transport authorities have now been settled, the revised offer between the negotiating teams will only be presented to members of the union for ratification today (21 May), and the fall-out of the strike will continue for some time.

During the strike, conventional reefer terminals continued to work and a number of additional reefer vessels were chartered to move volumes which would otherwise have been shipped in containers.

In the meantime, the South African fruit industry remained largely silent, although a decision by shipping company Maersk Line to impose a congestion surcharge on exporters because of the strike sent tempers flaring, with the government and the transport authority Transnet accused of putting the country’s export programmes at risk.

Industry association Fruit South Africa (FSA) rejected the surcharge, asking exporters not to pay and referring Maersk to Transnet for the recovery of its losses.

'The impact on your operations is clearly not due to any action or neglect from producers and/or exporters,' said Anton Rabe, chairman of Fruit South Africa, in a terse letter to Maersk.

At the same time, FSA also blamed the disruption caused by the strike on government policies which it said allowed a monopolistic position in the container terminals of the South African ports.

By not allowing other container terminal operators to compete in the country’s ports, the group argued, the country’s exports are being held to ransom by a 'monopolistic Transnet workforce'.

With the strike over, these issues are likely to dominate discussions for some time to come.

However, the immediate priority is to address the backlog which has been caused by the strike; industry sources have warned that the effects could be felt for the next few months.