'Worst-performing' Durban Port showing significant signs of operational improvement, says SAAFF

There are encouraging recent reports detailing improvement at the Port of Durban, which was ranked last in the World Bank Container Port Index for 2024.

The past month has seen the private sector team up with the Border Management Agency (BMA) to address operational issues and improve efficiencies, explains a Moneyweb update.

In conversation with Stephen Grootes, the Southern African Association of Freight Forwarders' Devlyn Naidoo (executive for SARS and other government agencies) notes that the recently released World Bank report was largely contested.

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While acknowledging the institution's performance index as a useful benchmark Naidoo clarifies that the report was largely based on out anchorage, which is the time that vessels spend before they actually enter the port. "As such, it wasn't a direct reflection necessarily on the port terminal operations themselves, so therefore the picture can be seen as somewhat unidimensional."

Referring to the improvements they ARE witnessing at Durban Port, Naidoo also highlights the role of public-private partnership, as well the multi-layered nature of the logistics network.

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"There's the transactional layer, the entity layer, the regulatory layer... and when you look deeper within the logistics layer the components include things like operator performance and national supply chain factors that impact the overall final measurement, but yes, we are seeing significant improvement."

As Naidoo puts it, 'success has many owners'.

Here, he commends the leadership at Transnet for being objective, and looking at the targets that were set versus performance.

"If we cast our minds a year back when we had significant delays - and more recently of course the release of the World Bank report (in September 2025), it's not easy working with such feedback and still have your wits about you in terms of focusing on the target and delivering excellent results."

Naidoo ascribes the improvement currently being seen as a combination of efforts between the carriers on the waterside, the logistics service providers, Transnet themselves, and a strong public-private partnership endeavour in getting performance to stabilise and improve.

For more detail, listen to the interview audio at the top of the article