Supply chain disruption choking Southern African trade growth

Southern Africa’s trade growth is being strangled by container shipping’s inability to absorb increasing volumes as the sector contends with constrained port, vessel, and inland logistics networks brought about conflict in the Persian Gulf.

South Africa’s citrus exports were particularly hard hit by the crisis, with year-to-date exports having collapsed some 24% when measured against last year’s numbers, down from 15.2m cartons to 11.5m.

While small in terms of total merchandise – 4% of South Africa’s export activity – the Middle East is a region the country is particularly exposed to when it comes to fruit and meat, which have provided substantial injections for the South African economy.

“This makes the UAE/Saudi-linked routing and demand risks material, despite the limited aggregate share,” one source told The Loadstarwhile noting other regions have stepped in to fill the void.

With total year-to-date citrus exports having climbed a little over 2%, to 62.1m cartons, Asia, Europe, and the UK are playing an increasingly prominent role, European volumes topping 24.3m, while 6.2m cartons have headed towards the UK, and 2.9m across the Asia.

“Citrus is ramping up,” the source added.

More broadly, South Africa experienced something of a record-breaking month in May, with global container port throughput surpassing 17.3m teu, according to Container Trades Statistics (CTS), “highlighting the resilience of underlying cargo demand despite”.

Month on month, that represented 6.2% growth, despite the persistent issues with congestion, schedule disruption, and the wider supply chain pressures that have plagued the continent more broadly.

“This suggests current strains are being driven not by weak volumes, but by the system’s difficulty in absorbing elevated flows across already-constrained port, vessel, and inland logistics networks,” added the source.

Seven-day average vessel waiting times at Cape Town and Durban have ticked past the 48-hour mark, and it seems that in both cases, surging reefer demand for citrus exports are responsible – although each port has nuances of its own compounding this.

Kuehne + Nagel has singled out Cape Town as “the port… most constrained” in its network, and that together with reefer demand, the gateway is also dealing with increased ‘late-stack volumes’, further constraining operations, with “a high risk” of delays and rollings imminent.

At Durban the picture is more complex, with landside congestion and poor truck turnarounds, while the gateway is “currently experiencing heightened tensions and sporadic disruptions, linked to anti-immigration protests”.

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