‘Ports and Cargos’ massive investment in equipment has reduced time and cost for shippers’

John Jenkins is the managing director of Ports and Cargo Handling Services Limited (PCHSL), a subsidiary of Sifax Group and a 100 percent Nigerian operator in charge of Terminal C of Tin-Can Island Port. In this interview with AMAKA ANAGOR-EWUZIE, Jenkins says the terminal has through massive investment in infrastructure and cargo handling equipment contributed to economic development in Nigeria by setting the pace in terminal operations in-country and the whole of West African sub-region. These notable investments have made the terminal competitive, more efficient in service delivery and more cost effective for importers and exporters.

Could you please take us through the achievements and investments made by Ports and Cargo terminal from the inception of concession till date?

When this terminal was concessioned, there were number of old equipment that could not really fit into the purpose of time and there was need to replace them with new technology. Then, Ports and Cargo started investing in new equipment such as reach stackers, harbour cranes, empty handlers, and terminal tractors among others. As the business was growing, there were additional purchasing of equipment like harbour cranes.

In terms of container handling equipment, Ports and Cargo has recorded significant investment to complement the handling reach stackers, the company invested in Rubber Tyred Gantry (RTG) cranes. These RTGs allows us to store more containers in the terminal, increase our capacity to handle more containers and gives quicker turnaround. To further complement this, we invested in the installation of a container tracking system to deal with the increasing container volume.

The terminal has a brand new tracking system that enables it to track containers from the point of entry up to the stacking areas. We use this tracking system to determine the number of containers received and loaded in the vessel, released for importers and stacked in the terminal. We have also eliminated the human factor at the port as much as possible and we believe that this terminal is as good if not better than any other terminal in Lagos. We compare our performance against those of other known terminal operators.

Concession has made all the terminals to compete among themselves such that many want to be as good as others and none wants to be left behind. Everyone has started to improve on service delivery and it is one of the gains of concession. I have been in Nigeria for the past four years and one of the issues confronting the port is the dwell time of containers. Now, the dwell time has started to reduce from 28 days to 14 days making importers to pay less as storage and demurrage charges. Nigerian ports especially Ports and Cargo has become more efficient in terms of service delivery, discharging and loading containers into the vessel including delivering containers to the customers.     

We have invested in equipment, which has helped to reduce time and cost. This is something that was not there before concession; the major benefit to the end user is that the cost of doing business has gone down. Lost or misplaced containers were seen in the past and customer complaints were quickly handled. When we took over, the containers were blocked stacked and that made it difficult for us to take inventory of what we really had, but over time we have been able to eliminate that and free the terminal to ensure there was no congestion.

What are the challenges confronting your terminal? And how were you able to surmount them?

All the terminals have become more efficient but the bad state of the road is letting operations down. All the terminals have reached high performance and service delivery level, but if we cannot get cargo in and out of the ports, the economy cannot improve any further. We see trucks breakdown on the port roads and containers falling over. For us, government has to do something about the port access roads to ensure there would be continuous improvement in the terminals.

Obviously, we also have challenge with power supply due to the fact that our terminals are not connected to the national grid. Every terminal is run on generator, which is not environmentally good. This has huge impact on the cost of doing business because it is costly to power generators with diesel especially judging from the large number of equipment in the terminal. The amount spent on generating electricity in the terminal on monthly basis has become unimaginable.

The Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA), our landlord, has done a very good job for us in terms of the provision of marine and common user infrastructure. NPA has provided all the support that we needed and have repaired our quay aprons.

What are your expectations from Federal Government and Nigerian Ports Authority as regards creating enabling environment for your operations to thrive?

We need a truck park because even if the road is well built and the trucks have nowhere to go, the problem will continue. Currently, trucks park on the road because they do not have anywhere to go. The truck park being constructed at the Second Gate of Tin-Can Island port has been under construction since four years ago and is yet to be completed.

That truck park, if completed, will bring relief to Tin-Can Island port and there is limited work to be done for that truck park to become functional. There is need to complete that truck park as quickly as possible to stop trucks from parking on the port roads.

There is also need for the port roads to be well lit for security purposes especially at night. We need better lightening to enable people to check security challenge. The roads need to be well illuminated in order not to create room for hoodlums to hide in the dark to operate.

Are there new business opportunities and alliances, which Ports and Cargo entered into recently?

Ports and Cargo has new openings this year. The terminal has been successful in attracting new alliance and customers especially from new routes, customers like Evergreen, MOL Liner and MNM African Shipping etc to bring cargoes into the terminal. We also developed a new warehouse around the port to enable us decongest our terminal. The terminal has also succeeded in building alternate gate different from the old NPA gate and this has since given trucks coming to our terminal ease of access in and out of the terminal.

Prior to this, the old NPA gate was shared with Roro port, Customs, Five Star etc and coming through the old gate into our terminal does not give a very good impression of Ports and Cargo because there are a lot of abandoned and overtime cars arrested by police around the old gate. This created huge congestion and delay that come with some avoidable cost for the importer, but now, we can bring in export cargo, empties through our new gate.

What forecast and projections do you think will shape business activities in the port going forward?

People believe that next year is going to be more difficult than this year, but I believe that once we overcome the downturn that things we go back to normal from the second quarter of 2016. We need to encourage coastal movement of goods and the establishment of the rail system. Nigeria has bilateral agreement with Niger and Chad, and these countries used to ship their imports through Nigeria but this has died down. There will be boom in business activities by next year but we need to look at our logistics chain, which includes the road network, the rail, especially linking Tin-Can port with Apapa because Apapa alone may not be able to sustain that traffic.

The past administration did something tangible to revive the rail system but there is need for the present government to continue and build on that.

We like to see more deliveries and the port operating full day in both Saturday and Sunday, even Customs can also have weekend delivery as well. Customs needs to be more flexible and conduct examination of containers on weekends as well.

If this economy is really going to grow and we really want to reach our full potentials, everybody is going to brace up for that. In area of scanning, we want the cargo to be scanned 24/7, including weekends.

AMAKA ANAGOR-EWUZIE