We now know a little bit more about the stevedoring market in Australia following the publication of this year’s Australian Competition & Consumer Commission’s Container Monitoring report.
Australian Stevedores
Total revenues: AUD$1,665 million
Total costs: AUD$1,356 million
Profit margin: 20.8% (up 10.9 percentage points)
(Earnings before interest, tax and amortisation as a percentage of total revenue)
Investment: AUD$50.6 million (down 28%).
Revenue per lift: $316.4
- Revenue per lift (quayside): AUD$195 per lift
- Revenue per lift (landside and other): AUD$121.4 per lift
Cost per lift: $257.7
Market share by port
- Brisbane: 1.5 million Twenty Foot Equivalent Units – market share 17.5% of total TEU
- Sydney: 2.7 m TEU, 32.6%
- Melbourne: 2.9 m TEU, 35.3%
- Adelaide: 0.4m TEU, 4.8%
- Fremantle: 0.8m TEU, 9.8%
Market share by stevedore lifts
Note: some boxes are TEUs i.e. twenty footers. Some boxes are FEUs i.e. forty footers.
- Patrick: 2.1m; market share of 39.6%
- DP World: 1.9m; 35.8%
- VICT: 0.6m; 11.3%
- Hutchison: 0.4m; 7.5%
- FACT (Adelaide) 0.3m; 5.7%
- Total lifts: 5.3 million TEU
Container Terminal Productivity
- Crane rate: 28.1 boxes per hour per crane
Shipping Australia comment: box moves per hour per crane is a key metric. The faster a crane works, the more quickly a ship is unloaded. The figure of 28.1 box moves per hour per crane is a good example of how an average can greatly disguise the true picture. Some ports in Australia, we are advised, do about 30 box moves per hour per crane. Other ports can do as low as 12 or 14 box moves per hour per crane.
It’s worth noting that, according to the ACCC (itself quoting official NZ data), the port of Tauranga consistently outperforms Australian ports. This is not anything unique or special about Tauranga – although we’re sure it is a well-run port – it’s more a reflection of the fact Australian ports aren’t good enough. For at least a decade or two, the Port of Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates has been claiming 60 box moves per hour per crane. Meanwhile, the Port of Haifa, Israel, hit just under 75 box moves per hour on one crane. Meanwhile, Haifah also reported 318 boxes moved by six cranes in one hour on a ship, giving it a crane rate of 53 box moves per hour per crane (318 / 6). There are plenty of other examples all around the world.
