Kenya Ports Authority says the cargo dwell time at the Port of Mombasa has reduced from an average of 5.6 days in December 2020 to 4.6 days in January 2021.
KPA attributes this to strategic operational changes after taking over operations at Port Reitz Yard and reorganising the planning units of the logistics partners, increasing operation harmony hence increasing end-to-end efficiency in the port operations.
Dangerous cargo loading, which was previously experiencing great delays due to distance of the loading zone from stacking blocks, was improved by allowing it to be loaded at the now optimised line 12 at Port Reitz, which is more efficient especially for cargo received at Container Terminal 2.
Centralisation of the cargo handling processes and the recently introduced double deck wagons on the Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) have significantly contributed to increased deliveries to the Inland Container Depot (ICD).
“Loading of double deck wagons has greatly boosted the number of containers being evacuated. We started with one double deck train of 38 wagons hauling 114 TEUs and this has now stabilised at two trains per week,” said Acting Managing Director Eng Rashid Salim.
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Salim said a total of 10,072 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) have been evacuated in the past two weeks compared to 9,774 in the first two weeks of the year.
A single double deck train currently hauls 114 TEUs on a single trip using up to 30 percent less resources compared to the normal single stack train.
The MD added that currently the port only allows up to four waiting ships on the queue with the numbers expected to drop in the coming week.
“In fact, we will be loading containers directly from the discharging vessels,” he said.
The port’s performance recorded a decline in 2020 recording 1.360 million TEUs compared to 1.417 million TEUs witnessed in 2019 due to supply chain disruptions caused by global lockdowns due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
As part of improving the service delivery to customers across the region, KPA plans to enhance the use of Hand Held Terminals (HHT) for customers to get real-time updates.
“We are in constant communication with our stakeholders to come up with more strategies for swift ship turnaround so that we not only improve efficiency but also jointly meet our obligations,” Salim added.
Meanwhile, forecast for the next two weeks shows that 14 vessels are expected to discharge 19,533 TEUs at the container terminals and load another 21,541 TEUs.
The Conventional cargo is set to receive 18 general cargo ships to discharge 330,623 metric tonnes and load 54,333 metric tonnes and 3 Tanker vessels set to also discharge 157,074 metric tonnes.
