Australian ports news

The ACCC has granted authorisation to DP World Australia and Patrick Stevedores Operations to give preferential treatment to truck carriers engaging in dual runs, i.e. where a truck both delivers and picks up a container in the same run, at the Port of Fremantle.

DP World and Patrick operate container terminals at the port and provide stevedoring services at their respective terminals.

The proposed arrangement, which is valid until December 2nd, 2015, is a government and industry initiative intended to address the problem of road congestion at the Port of Fremantle and improve efficiency at the Port by reducing the number of trucks required to move the same volume of containers.

The arrangement does not involve DP World and Patrick reaching agreement on the price or number of the slots they make available at their terminals for booking by truck carriers. These will continue to be decided individually. For these reasons, the ACCC considers that there are limited public detriments that may arise from the proposed arrangements.

In other news, the ACCC said that if Australia’s ports are to meet demand, which is forecast to almost triple during the next two decades, then competition is needed to encourage stevedores to invest in terminals and make the best use of existing facilities.

"The challenge we face as a nation is to improve productivity, to underpin Australia’s economic performance," said ACCC chairman Graeme Samuel. "Competition is important for driving the stevedoring industry to invest in new capacity and use existing infrastructure to move containers on and off ships faster and in ever-increasing numbers."

The ACCC found while that stevedores‘ profits increased in 2009-2010, this was largely due to improved economic conditions. Some measures of capital productivity have not increased since June 2001.

Decisions to allow a third stevedore to invest in additional capacity at the ports of Brisbane and Sydney have already been taken. This will mean a new competitor is introduced in those ports from 2012. Melbourne is yet to decide on how it will meet the increasing demand.

The ACCC monitors prices, costs and profits of container stevedores at the major Australian container ports.

DP World and Patrick operate at the four largest ports: Brisbane, Fremantle, Melbourne and Sydney. A third stevedore, Hutchison Port Holdings, will commence operations in Brisbane and Sydney in 2012.