The KwaZulu-Natal economy is about to get a boost worth billions of rands from a major reshaping of the Durban harbour that is about to take place, with port authorities set to embark on excavating part of the Bayhead area to accommodate more containers.
A public meeting called for Thursday is expected to outline plans to quadruple the size of the existing container terminals and to create a forum for taking the project forward. The development will help the port to keep its pre-eminent status on the continent and contribute to Durban's growth. The project goes hand in hand with the project now under way to increase the width of Durban's entrance channel by 100m.
The widening and deepening of the entrance channel alone is costing about R2-billion and comes on top of several other recent projects in the port either completed or under way that run into billions.
The Bayhead basin will become the single largest undertaking in the history of the port, eclipsing even the construction of the container terminal in the 1970s and will add considerably to the water area of Durban Bay.
The ambitious proposals for the Bayhead include plans to excavate a new basin around which container terminals can be constructed. Ships would arrive either down the existing but widened Esplanade and Maydon channels or along a new channel extending the Island View channel to the south. Either route is expected to evoke fierce debate, particularly among the environmental lobby, while the Island View proposal will involve considerable replacement expense for the petrochemical industry.
Having additional terminals in the Bayhead basin area will increase Durban's container capacity to over five million TEU (20-foot container equivalents). Using conservative estimates, Durban is expected to run out of capacity by 2010 and, even with the proposed developments, will have to seek further solutions within five years after that. During the 2006/07 financial year just completed the port handled 2,335 million TEU.
Sea-borne trade accounts for 95 percent of South Africa's international trade and Durban accounts for 33 percent of that trade by mass and 65 percent of all containers imported or exported.
It is believed that Transnet, which owns the National Ports Authority, also intends securing the Durban International Airport site when that becomes available after 2010, so that a dig-out port can be built in the future.
Given the projections of world container demand, this scenario could become a reality much sooner than expected.