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Join us as we report through 2021
‘and learn with Africa Ports & Ships’
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There will be no Daily News report this Friday 24 September, a public holiday in South Africa.
TODAY’S BULLETIN OF MARITIME NEWS
These news reports are updated on an ongoing basis. Check back regularly for the latest news as it develops – where necessary refresh your page at www.africaports.co.za
Click on headline to go direct to story : use the BACK key to return
FIRST VIEW: JOLLY COBALTO
- WHARF TALK: Dramatic local beginning for new South African tug – UMKHUSELI
- Special Feature: Shining the Light: South Africa’s lightkeeping heritage
- WHARF TALK: Former Safmarine ship – UML VALENTINA
- Back to the future for Inchcape in Sri Lanka
- IN CONVERSATION: Scientists still don’t know how far melting in Antarctica will go – or the sea level rise it will unleash
- TNPA appoints Durban Port Manager
- WHARF TALK: Handysize bulker from a great shipping line – WULIN
- Commercial production at Mozambique’s Coral Sul FLNG on track for 2022
- Benin Terminal commissions two Konecranes container handlers at port of Cotonou
- Cameroon’s Kribi port terminal bolstered by five new RTGs
- Maritime sector’s commitment on climate change: Highlight of IMO new video
- Debmarine diamond recovery ship Benguela Gem arrives in Cape Town
- WHARF TALK: New charter vessel for MACS – ARAMIS
- IN CONVERSATION: How big is the Islamic threat in Mozambique? And why are Rwandan troops there?
- UNCTAD: Strengthening resilience in commodity-dependent countries
- USS Herschel ‘Woody’ Williams arrives in Walvis Bay
- De Beers’ Damen-built diamond recovery ship heads for South Africa
- Disabled MSC KATERINA arrives under tow in Durban for repairs
- WHARF TALK: Offshore support vessel heading for Angola – GREATSHIP MANISHA
- AMSOL welcomes new anchor handling vessel tug supply vessel UMKHUSELI to the fleet
- No Time To Die: new James Bond film with a helping hand from CMA CGM
- IN CONVERSATION: How a new app helps fishing boats avoid endangered species
- WHARF TALK: another in the ‘stream of tankers’ – STI EXCEL
- Delivering Covid-19 vaccines: International organizations, vaccine manufacturers to intensify cooperation
EARLIER NEWS CAN BE FOUND HERE AT NEWS CATEGORIES…….
The Monday masthead shows the Port of Durban Sugar terminal
The Tuesday masthead shows the Port of Durban T-Jetty
The Wednesday masthead shows the Port of Durban Container Terminal (DCT) North Quay
The Thursday masthead shows the Port of Durban DCT by night
The Friday masthead shows the Port of Durban Multi Purpose City Terminal
The Saturday masthead shows the Port of Durban Island View
The Sunday masthead shows the Port of Durban Maydon Wharf
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The elusive ro-ro vessel of Ignazio Messina line, JOLLY COBALTO (IMO 9668960) proved to be a bonus for ship photographers last Saturday 18 September when the 51,055-gt Italian ship arrived in the Port of Durban at 08h25, i.e. in daylight! Although she has called at Durban on many occasions since entering service in 2015, the Jolly Cobalto usually arrived and sailed during the hours of darkness so this was a happy and welcome arrival.
The ship has a length of 240 metres and width of 37.5m with a deadweight of 44,574 tons. Jolly Cobalto was built in 2015 at the STX-Jinhae shipyard as a sister ship to the Jolly Titiano which entered service the previous year. They were joined later by Jolly Vanadio and Jolly Palladio. The prefix name Jolly means Joker and was in use on Ignazio Messina’s earlier ro-ro ships priot to the current fleet,which also operated on the Mediterranean – Red Sea – East Africa and South Africa service, terminating in the south always at Durban.
On this latest voyage Jolly Cobalto arrived in Durban from Mombasa after a voyage of five and a half days. Once she has completed her cargo working the ship will return to the Mediterranean and Italy, calling at ports at scheduled or induced ports along the way. The company of Ignazio Messina, which was founded in 1921, was joined with Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC) in early 2017 when MSC took a 49% minority share to assist the company to survove a financial crisis. Since then the two companies have made use of cooperative activities including ship chartering. Ignazio Messina & C SPA has its headquarters in Genoa, Italy. – trh
The above pictures are by Keith Betts
Added 19 September 2021 Africa Ports & Ships
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Photographs of shipping and other maritime scenes involving any of the ports of South Africa or from the rest of the African continent, together with a short description, name of ship/s, ports etc are welome.
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WHARF TALK: Dramatic local beginning for new South African tug – UMKHUSELI
Story by Jay Gates
Pictures by ‘Dockrat’
The arrival of any new vessel, especially one that is under the ownership of a South African maritime company, is always a time of local celebration, and even more so when the first task for the said new vessel is to dispatched to sea, in order to bring another vessel out of danger, and into the safety of a port of refuge.
On 22nd September the large Anchor Handling, Tug, Supply (AHTS) vessel UMKHUSELI (IMO 9427055) – the name means ‘Protector’ – arrived off Cape Town harbour at 13h00, after a voyage around the coast from Port Elizabeth. Except that, she was not alone when she arrived, but acting as the towing vessel for a disabled LR1 tanker, ENERGY CENTAUR (IMO 9387281) that she had picked up en-route.
Whilst the tanker is of interest in itself, it is the Umkhuseli that draws the attention of the observer, as she is the latest vessel to join the fleet of Cape Town based African Marine Solutions (AMSOL).
Her maiden arrival in South African waters only occurred last week (Friday 17 September – see that report in this week’s edition CLICK HERE ), and due to the emergency taking place off the South East Cape coast, she was diverted from a first arrival in Durban, and went straight to Port Elizabeth instead, in order to take on the necessary stores and equipment to allow her to commence the tow of Energy Centaur to Cape Town. She departed Port Elizabeth at 22h00 on 18th September to rendezvous with the casualty.
Built in 2013 by Wuchang Shipbuilding at Wuhan in China, Umkhuseli is 83 metres in length and has a deadweight of 4,427 tons. She is categorised as a Super Large AHTS, and as such is powered by four Wärtsilä 9L32 9 cylinder 4 stroke main engines producing 6,050 bhp each, giving her a nominal power output of 24,129 bhp (18,000 kW) to give her a service speed of 13 knots.
Her auxiliary machinery includes two Caterpillar 3406 generators providing 292 kW each, and a third Caterpillar 3406 generator, configured as an emergency generator, to provide 292 kW. As a Super Large AHTS, Umkhuseli has a respectable bollard pull of 219 tons.
She has a firefighting capability of Fifi2, and is also DP2 configured for manoeuvrability. As used in the platform supply role, Umkhuseli has 768 m2 of deck space available for the carriage of cargo. She provides accommodation for 24 persons.
A VS4616 from the Wärtsilä Ship Design bureau, of Helsinki in Finland, Umkhuseli is one of three sisterships launched as Toisa Envoy, to the order of one of the great North Sea offshore operators, Toisa Shipping. However, as a result of a downturn in the oil and gas market, her parent company went out of business and she was sold to Eastern Navigation of Singapore, for a knockdown price of US$6 million (ZAR88 million) and renamed ENA Frontier.
It is from Eastern Navigation that she was purchased by AMSOL. Currently under the flag of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and with a hastily applied name, she will now receive the necessary upgrades and tweaks to bring up to AMSOL standards which will allow her to operate anywhere on the South African coast, and elsewhere, and fulfill another opportunity for the advancement and training of local seafarers.
Added 23 September 2021 Africa Ports & Ships
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Special Feature: Shining the Light
South Africa’s lightkeeping heritage
by David Gordon:
Executive Manager: Lighthouse and Navigational Systems
Transnet National Ports Authority (TNPA) is shining the light on South Africa’s 180 years of lightkeeping history this Heritage Month.
TNPA is mandated by the National Ports Act No.12 of 2005 to provide, operate and maintain lighthouses and other Marine Aids to Navigation (AtoNs) within ports and along South Africa’s coastline. TNPA, though its Lighthouse and Navigational Systems (LNS) business unit, operates and maintains:
– all of South Africa’s 45 lighthouses
– the Automatic Identification System (AIS) Network, a coast-wide network of AIS base stations that provides real-time information about vessels calling at the eight commercial ports, as well as vessel travelling along the coastline; and
– an AtoN service to the eight commercial ports by installing, commissioning and maintaining buoys, quay-, breakwater-, leading- and sector lights, and fog signals (182 buoys, 144 lights).
South Africa’s first lightkeeper
South Africa’s first lightkeeper was employed in 1841 at the Green Point Lighthouse in Cape Town, the oldest in the country. He was responsible for looking after the light that was powered by oil and then gas, and the optic that was rotated by means of a weight-driven clockwork mechanism.
He lived in makeshift accommodation next to the tower.
Records show that lightkeepers served at 27 South African lighthouses, as well as two lighthouses along the coast of Namibia. The island lighthouses – Bird Island off Gqeberha (Port Elizabeth) in the Eastern Cape; and Dassen Island off Yzerfontein and Robben Island off Cape Town in the Western Cape – proved the most challenging for the lightkeepers and their families.
Island living
Supplies and provisions were delivered once a month by the Harbour tugs and were often delayed due to adverse weather and ocean conditions. It was very difficult to grow fresh produce because of limited access to fresh water, and steak was a rare luxury. Children were sent to boarding school on the mainland. There were rarely other humans on the islands, and the isolation would sometimes feel suffocating.
But there were many benefits, too. There was a plentiful supply of the freshest crayfish, mussels and fish. The children spent their school holidays in a haze of sun and sea spray. When helicopters replaced the tugs to deliver supplies and visiting maintenance staff, the lightkeeper’s wives could visit the mainland every month to do their own shopping and meet up with friends for a quick cup of tea and a chat. The lightkeepers would visit the mainland once a year on annual leave, and relief keepers would fill in for them.
Devotion to duty
The lightkeeper’s life moved at a slower pace, but the days – and nights – were full of activity.
There were oil lamps to be topped up and wicks to be trimmed. When gas-lit lanterns were introduced, there were paraffin tanks to be maintained and replaced. There were lenses and lantern house glazings, slick with the salty sea air, to be cleaned and countless brass fittings and trimmings to be polished. There were hundreds of gears and levers to be cleaned and greased, and diesel generators to be maintained.
Painting and varnishing were seemingly endless tasks, as the harsh sea air corroded walls, doors, frames and ladders. Outside the lighthouse, there were bushes and shrubs to be trimmed at regular intervals to dissuade snakes and other local wildlife from making a home in the tower or living quarters. At night, the lightkeepers would keep watch over the light and would wind up the weight-driving clockwork mechanisms at regular intervals.
These were used to rotate the light continuously and at the correct speed.
Lightkeepers also performed an important monitoring function and were involved in many rescue and salvage operations along the coastline. When the SA Seafarer ran aground on night of 1 July 1966 right in front of the Green Point Lighthouse in Cape Town, the rotating lens was stopped and that the light was focused on the ship to help the helicopter crews to airlift those on board to safety.
The impact of technology
Technology has come a long way since the early years of lightkeeping, and has greatly reduced the need for traditional lightkeepers. Incandescent bulbs and powerful LED lamps replaced the original oil and gas lit lanterns, and electricity replaced the original weight-driven clockwork mechanisms. Sensors determine when to switch the lights on at sunset and off at dawn, and when to switch fog signals on and off.
Automatic lamp changer mechanisms replace defective lamps while the lighthouse is in operation, and standby diesel generators provide emergency power in the case of an interruption to the mains supply. The “internet of things” enables technicians to remotely monitor the lights, as well as the solar photovoltaic systems in use at certain lighthouses.
Today, there are 45 lighthouses operating along the country’s coastline from Port Nolloth in the west to Sodwana Bay in the east, and all are fully automated.
South Africa’s last lightkeepers
There are only nine lightkeepers in service today:
1. Wayne Brown at Cape Columbine Lighthouse in Paternoster, Western Cape;
2. Peter Saaise at Robben Island Lighthouse off Cape Town, Western Cape;
3. Cyril Mkhulisi and Russell Solomons at Slangkoppunt Lighthouse in Kommetjie, Western Cape;
4. Hubert Visser at Danger Point Lighthouse in Gansbaai, Western Cape;
5. Martin Peterson at Great Fish Point Lighthouse near Port Alfred, Eastern Cape;
6. Joseph Kannemeyer at Hood Point Lighthouse in East London, Eastern Cape;
7. Fuzile Komanisi at Mbashe Lighthouse near Elliotdale, Eastern Cape; and
8. Raymond Wyness at Green Point Lighthouse near Scottburgh, KwaZulu-Natal.
They maintain the towers and optics in their care, and help visiting maintenance teams with projects and tasks wherever possible. They welcome visitors and overnight guests, and willingly share their vast knowledge and experience. They build relationships with customers and help connect TNPA with the communities we serve. They embody the spirit of ubuntu because they understand the true value of respect, trust and teamwork.
Added 22 September 2021 Africa Ports & Ships
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WHARF TALK: Former Safmarine ship – UML VALENTINA
Story by Jay Gates
Pictures by ‘Dockrat’
As the process of removal of the two great deepsea South African shipping companies from the world scene continues, and any vestige of South African ships being seen in home ports declines by the day, regular observers are now turning their attention to spotting former Safmarine and Unicorn vessels as they arrive, or depart, from their previous regular ports of call in South Africa.
On 20th September at 19h00 the multi-purpose cargo ship UML VALENTINA (IMO 9500077) arrived at the Table Bay anchorage, from Port Harcourt in Nigeria, and after a short three hour wait off the port, she entered Cape Town harbour at 22h00 and berthed at the Eastern Mole in the Duncan Dock.
Such a berth points to nothing more than a bunkering stop, and one of short duration, long enough to fill up her fuel tanks, and then for her to be on her way once more. Less than 24 hours later, after refueling from the bunker barge Southern Valour, UML Valentina was on her way again, and at 21h00 on 21st September she sailed from Cape Town, bound for Singapore.
Built in 2010 by Tongfang Jiangxin Shipbuilding at Jiujiang in China, UML Valentina is 140 metres in length and has a deadweight of 12,349 tons. She is powered by a single Hyundai MAN-B&W 6S46MC-C 6 cylinder 2 stroke main engine, producing 10,719 bhp (7,860 kW) to drive a fixed pitch propeller for a service speed of 13.5 knots.
Her auxiliary machinery includes three Daihatsu 6DK-20 generators providing 770 kW each, and a Cummins 6BT5.9-D(C) emergency generator providing 100 kW. She has a Zhangjiagang Greens Shazhou Boiler Company LHG exhaust gas boiler, and a Zhangjiagang Greens Shazhou Boiler Company TF oil fired boiler.
One of four sisterships built as a multi-purpose vessel, UML Valentina has a container carrying capacity of 712 TEU, of which 144 reefer plugs are provided. She has three holds, with a cargo carrying capacity of 15,537 m3, and these are serviced by three hydraulic deck cranes, one of 45 tons, and two of 80 tons, which can be used in tandem for a heavylift capacity of 180 tons.
Owned by Eugen Friederich Reederei GmbH of Bremen in Germany, UML Valentina is managed by United Heavy Lift GmbH of Hamburg, and operated by United Marquise Line (UML) of Næstved in Denmark. UML were only launched as a shipping concern in October 2020, when United Heavy Lift and Marguisa formed a joint venture to service routes between Europe, the Mediterranean, West Africa and South and East Africa.
As such, this is not the first Cape Town call in 2021 for UML Valentina, as she has previously called in March for a three day turnaround, before sailing for Maputo in Mozambique, and again in May when she again took bunkers only on a 12 hour stay, sailing for Port Harcourt in Nigeria. Prior to this she was a regular caller at South African ports between 2010 and 2015.
Shortly after her delivery in 2010, UML Valentina was placed on a long term charter for Safmarine, and operated until 2015 as SAFMARINE LONGA. Initially she was placed on the Maersk EURWAF service, operating between Northern European ports and West Africa. In 2014 she was switched to the Maersk SAFWAF service, operating between South Africa and West Africa, with regular port rotations through both Durban and Cape Town over a two year period.
Added 22 September 2021 Africa Ports & Ships
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Back to the future for Inchcape in Sri Lanka
Inchcape Shipping Services has rediscovered its roots by forming a new joint venture with John Keells Holdings PLC (JKH) in Sri Lanka that is positioned to offer a full suite of services to ease voyage logistics at a strategic intersection of one of the world’s busiest shipping routes.
The South Asian country is an important maritime hub in the Indian Ocean, with an estimated 31,000 vessels a year traversing the East-West trade route connecting the major industrial centres of North America, Western Europe and Asia, making it a vital link in the global supply chain serving a region that hosts around 35% of the world’s population.
It is not surprising then that Inchcape’s South Asia Area General Manager Ravi Ramachandran believes: “It is long overdue that Inchcape has a presence in Sri Lanka” with the joint venture named Inchcape Mackinnon Mackenzie Shipping (Private) Ltd that was launched in July this year.
Ramachandran added: “This joint venture brings to the table the globally uniform service standard of Inchcape together with the local strength and assets of the John Keells Group, which will collectively be able to deliver a superior value proposition to customers.”
Turning back the clock
There is also an interesting historical twist to the tale as the joint venture incorporates Mackinnon Mackenzie Shipping, which was originally established in 1871 as Mackinnon Mackenzie & Co in the former Ceylon by Inchcape’s founders, Scottish merchants William Mackinnon and Robert Mackenzie, before being acquired by JKH in 1974.
And to square the circle, the joint venture is located in the Mackinnon Mackenzie building in the capital Colombo that was formerly owned by the Earl of Inchcape.
To quote Inchcape Sri Lanka country manager Tharaka Nanayakkara: “So this marks something of a homecoming for Inchcape and we feel we are recovering part of our history.”
The landmark collaboration expands Inchcape’s area operation based in Mumbai, India and enables it to deliver maritime services in key areas such as bunkering, husbandry and crew changes for a wide range of vessels – from oil tankers, container carriers and bulkers to ro-ro ships, naval vessels and cruise liners – calling at all ports of Sri Lanka.
Bunkering challenge
Inchcape’s commercial manager for the Middle East, South Asia and Africa, Koushik Chakraborty, points out a major challenge for vessels traversing this major sea route is securing high-quality bunker fuel at competitive prices with minimal route deviation and time-definite delivery.
It is understood that the new venture is able to arrange more economic OPL (Out-of-Port Limit) bunkering at the ports of Colombo and Galle, as well as bunkering at anchorage at Hambantota, a newly developed port at the southern tip of Sri Lanka located ten nautical miles from the East-West trade route.
This is facilitated by the country’s primary supplier of marine bunker fuels and lubricants, Lanka Marine Services, which is part of the John Keells Group’s ports and shipping business along with South Asia Gateway Terminals.
Chakraborty added: “Our scale allows us to offer sharp prices and guaranteed time-definite delivery to facilitate fast turnaround. This provides a significant saving to the ships versus many other international ports where bunkers are taken at anchorage or alongside.”
Crew changes
A big issue for ship operators during the COVID-19 pandemic has been ensuring crew changes are carried out safely and securely to maintain health on board and minimise disruption to operations, with Sri Lanka an important location for switching crews as well as loading spares and provisions.
Pandemic action
Ramachandran says Inchcape facilitated the repatriation of hundreds of Indian seafarers from the US, Manila and Singapore at the height of the pandemic, organising their smooth disembarkation from vessels and providing a safe and seamless transfer back home by taking care of end-to-end transport as well as necessary official approvals.
Over the past year, it has successfully facilitated more than 7,000 crew changes across several ports in India for both Indian and foreign crew in line with strict protocols and has now secured permission from local port health authorities to carry out vaccinations on board vessels with the assistance of trained medical personnel.
Reported by Paul Ridgway
London
Added 22 September 2021 Africa Ports & Ships
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IN CONVERSATION: Scientists still don’t know how far melting in Antarctica will go – or the sea level rise it will unleash
Chen Zhao, University of Tasmania and Rupert Gladstone, University of Lapland
The Antarctic ice sheet is the largest mass of ice in the world, holding around 60% of the world’s fresh water. If it all melted, global average sea levels would rise by 58 metres. But scientists are grappling with exactly how global warming will affect this great ice sheet.
This knowledge gap was reflected in the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). It contains projections from models in which important processes affecting the ice sheets, known as feedbacks and tipping points, are absent because scientific understanding is lacking.
Projected sea level rise will have widespread effects in Australia and around the world. But current projections of ice sheet melt are so wide that developing ways for societies to adapt will be incredibly expensive and difficult.
If the world is to effectively adapt to sea level rise with minimal cost, we must quickly address the uncertainty surrounding Antarctica’s melting ice sheet. This requires significant investment in scientific capacity.
The great unknown
Ice loss from the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets was the largest contributor to sea level rise in recent decades. Even if all greenhouse gas emissions ceased today, the heat already in the ocean and atmosphere would cause substantial ice loss and a corresponding rise in sea levels. But exactly how much, and how fast, remains unclear.
Scientific understanding of ice sheet processes, and of the variability of the forces that affect ice sheets, is incredibly limited. This is largely because much of the ice sheets are in very remote and harsh environments, and so difficult to access.
This lack of information is one of the main sources of uncertainty in the models used to estimate ice mass loss.
At the moment, quantifying how much the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets will contribute to sea level rise primarily involves an international scientific collaboration known as the “Ice Sheet Model Intercomparison Project for CMIP6”, or ISMIP6, of which we are part.
The project includes experts in ice sheet and climate modelling and observations. It produces computer simulations of what might happen if the polar regions melt under different climate scenarios, to improve projections of sea level rise.
The project also investigates ice sheet–climate feedbacks. In other words, it looks at how processes in the oceans and atmosphere will affect the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets, including whether the changes might cause them to collapse – leading to large and sudden increases in sea level.
Read more:
Anatomy of a heatwave: how Antarctica recorded a 20.75°C day last month
Melting from below
Research has identified so-called “basal melt” as the most significant driver of Antarctic ice loss. Basal melt refers to the melting of ice shelves from underneath, and in the case of Antarctica, interactions with the ocean are thought to be the main cause. But gathering scientific observations beneath ice shelves is a major logistical challenge, leading to a dearth of data about this phenomenon.
This and other constraints mean the rate of progress in ice sheet modelling has been insufficient to date, and so active ice sheet models are not included in climate models.
Scientists must instead make projections using the ice sheet models in isolation. This hinders scientific attempts to accurately simulate the feedback between ice and climate.
For example, it creates much uncertainty in how the interaction between the ocean and the ice shelf will affect ice mass loss, and how the very cold, fresh meltwater will make its way back to global oceans and cause sea level rise, and potentially disrupt currents.
Despite the uncertainties ISMIP6 is dealing with, it has published a series of recent research including a key paper published in Nature in May. This found if the world met the Paris Agreement target of limiting global warming to 1.5℃ this century, land ice melt would cause global sea level rise of about 13cm by 2100, in the most optimistic scenario. This is compared to a rise of 25cm under the world’s current emissions-reduction pledges.
The study also outlines a pessimistic, but still plausible, basal melt scenario for Antarctica in which sea levels could be five times higher than in the main scenarios.
The breadth of such findings underpinned sea level projections in the latest IPCC report. The Antarctic ice sheet once again represented the greatest source of uncertainty in these projections.
The below graph shows the IPCC’s latest sea level projections. The shaded area reflects the large uncertainties in models using the same basic data sets and approaches. The dotted line reflects deep uncertainty about tipping points and thresholds in ice sheet stability.
IPCC reports are intended to guide global policy-makers in coming years and decades. But the uncertainties about ice melt from Antarctica limit the usefulness of projections by the IPCC and others.
IPCC
Dealing with uncertainty
Future sea level rise poses big challenges such as human displacement, infrastructure loss, interference with agriculture, a potential influx of climate refugees, and coastal habitat degradation.
It’s crucial that ice sheet models are improved, tested robustly against real-world observations, then integrated into the next generation of international climate models – including those being developed in Australia.
International collaborations such as NECKLACE and RISE are seeking to coordinate international effort between models and observations. Significant investment across these projects is needed.
Sea levels will continue rising in the coming decades and centuries. Ice sheet projections must be narrowed down to ensure current and future generations can adapt safely and efficiently.
The authors would like to acknowledge the contributions of Dr Ben Galton-Fenzi, Dr Rupert Gladstone, Dr Thomas Zwinger and David Reilly to the research from which this article draws.
Chen Zhao, Research associate, University of Tasmania and Rupert Gladstone, Adjunct professor, University of Lapland
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Added 22 September 2021 Africa Ports & Ships
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TNPA appoints Durban Port Manager
TNPA’s Port Manager at Cape Town, Ms Nompumelelo ‘Mpumi’ Dweba-Kwetana, has been appointed as Port Manager: Port of Durban, as part of the port authority’s new operating model.
The port at Durban, Sub-Saharan Africa’s busiest, has been without a port manager for a number of years, although the fomer port manager, Moshe Motlohi, who had been promoted to General Manager, has continued to act in that capacity for a lengthy period.
Motlohi was recently appointed as Regional Managing Executive, Eastern Ports (Durban and Richards Bay).
According to a TNPA statement, the appointment of Ms Dweba-Kwetana will assist in fast-tracking the Port of Durban Master Plan, a flagship infrastructure project that forms part of the new operating model and the broader Transnet reform programme.
The multi-year project will expand the port’s container capacity, with the ambitious aim of repositioning Durban as the strategic hub port for the African continent.
Dweba-Kwetana will vacate her role as Port Manager: Port of Cape to assume her new role in Durban, effective 1 October 2021.
She has over 20 years of maritime, port and logistics operations experience and is a qualified maritime economist. Prior to her appointment at Cape Town she served as Port Manager: Port of Ngqura for eight years.
There is at present no indication of her replacement as Cape Town port manager.
Added 21 September 2021 Africa Ports & Ships
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WHARF TALK: Handysize bulker from a great shipping line – WULIN
Story by Jay Gates
Pictures by ‘Dockrat’
South African ship spotters lament the disappearance of some of the world’s great shipping companies that plied their trade through South African ports in the final decades of the 20th century. Companies such as Union-Castle, Clan Line, Ellermans and T&J Harrison of the UK, Royal Interocean Lines and Nedlloyd of Holland, or Deutsche Afrika Line of Germany to name but a few.
The same can be said for those companies whose trading routes serviced other parts of the world, such as South East Asia, where the likes of the Blue Funnel Line or Ben Line are sadly seen no more. And yet, in the Far East, the odd one has managed to retain its identity and can still be seen trading and, every now and then, even calling in to the odd South African port.
On 20th September at 05h00 the fully laden Handysize bulk carrier WULIN (IMO 9657870) arrived at the Table Bay Anchorage, and after a short four hours at anchor she entered Cape Town harbour and proceeded to C berth in the Duncan Dock to begin the discharge of her cargo. She had arrived from Tocopilla in Chile, which itself is the giveaway clue that identifies the cargo she is carrying as Potassium Nitrate fertiliser.
Built in 2014 by Chengxi Shipyard at Jiangyin in China, Wulin is 180 metres in length and has a deadweight of 39,049 tons. She is powered by a single Wärtsilä 5RTFlex50B 5 cylinder 2 stroke main engine, producing 8,226 bhp (6,050 kW) to drive a fixed pitch propeller for a service speed of 14 knots.
The fourth of sixteen B.Delta39 class designed sisterships, Wulin was designed by Deltamarin of Turku in Finland, with all being built at the Chengxi shipyard for her owners, with another eight sisterships being built at another Chinese shipyard. Of these 24 fleetmates, 20 would be equipped and utilised as ‘loggers’, and 4 would be equipped with grabs, and utilised solely in the bulk trades, with Wulin being one of the bulk traders.
Owned by one of the great British Far East colonial shipowners, the China Navigation Company, founded back in 1872 and a part of the Swire Group, previously of Hong Kong, but now based in Singapore, Wulin is owned, operated and managed by the China Navigation Company. Their famous red, blue and white houseflag still adorns both the bow, and the funnel, of Wulin.
The Swire Group are still identifiable with Hong Kong, as they are the founders, and owners, of the flag carrier of Hong Kong, namely the great Cathay Pacific Airways. A close look at the rear of every Cathay Pacific airliner will show the same Swire red, blue and white houseflag and the name of Swire.
With five holds, serviced by four 30 ton deck cranes, her own grabs, and capable of a bulk carrying capacity of 48,900 m3, Wulin is a perfect size for the fertiliser trade from Chile to South Africa. Her cargo of Potassium Nitrate is the one agricultural fertiliser that is natural in occurrence, and not the product of any industrial process linked to the offshore natural gas industry, but it is rather mined in the Atacama Desert of Chile. Chile is the top exporter of Potassium Nitrate in the world, producing just under 40% of the world total of the product.
China Navigation is well known as a forward thinking company, and very much engaged in anti-pollution incentives, fossil fuel reduction and other environmental issues. In 2016 Wulin was chosen as the vessel in the fleet to trial the use of Biofuel. The intention was to test it in phases, first on a testbench engine, and then for a three day continuous trial on a ship’s engine whilst underway. As such, 40m3 of Bio Fuel Oil (BFO) was supplied to Wulin in Rotterdam.
Carrying two additional Chief Engineers, an Engine Manufacturer technician and a Ship Manager, she sailed from Rotterdam for Las Palmas. Once out of the English Channel and into the open ocean, Wulin switched from using Marine Diesel Oil (MDO) to the new BFO for the three day trial. Despite a few minor initial problems with blocked filters, the changeover worked very smoothly.
The Wärtsilä engine ran for only 23 hours when a major fuel pressure fluctuation caused a fuel line to burst. After repairs were made, the Wärtsilä engine could not be restarted on BFO. Despite a period of intense fault finding that identified a number of component issues, the engine was restarted on MDO and Wulin proceeded to Las Palmas.
Test results highlighted a number of impurities in BFO production, storage and onboard delivery that resulted in engine component wear and subsequent performance problems. Testing of BFO was suspended until 2017, when changes were made to address all of the issues highlighted in the Wulin test. In the subsequent four years, the use of BFO is now much more commonplace, with very few operational and technical issues causing engine problems.
China Navigation, and Wulin, are not only environmental pathfinders for BFO, but all of the B.Delta39 bulk carriers in the fleet possess Bilge and Garbage Management Plans, are fitted with Ballast Water Treatment Plants, the main engines are all TIER II compliant for NOx emissions, and are fitted with advanced incinerators and oily water separator plants.
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Commercial production at Mozambique’s Coral Sul FLNG on track for 2022
Coral South to be first Mozambique project online despite recent Islamist violence
Commercial production at the 3.4 million mt/year capacity Coral South floating LNG production facility offshore of Cabo Delgado in Mozambique is on track to start as planned in 2022, according to the country’s energy minister Ernesto Max Elias Tonela.
In a pre-recorded video address ahead of the Japan-hosted 10th LNG Producer-Consumer Conference on 5 October, Tonela said Mozambique was also making progress in improving the security situation in the country, which has been hit by recent militant violence.
“Commercial production remains a target for 2022. This is the very first step, but a significant step, for Mozambique to join the LNG producing countries,” Tonela said.
More than 30 million mt/year of LNG production capacity is envisaged in Mozambique, but the fledgling LNG industry has been in part derailed by the growing Islamist insurgency that began in October 2017.
In late March, dozens of people were killed during attacks on the town of Palma, prompting France’s TotalEnergies in April to declare force majeure on work at its nearby 13.1 million mt/year Mozambique LNG project.
Work is on schedule at the Eni-operated Coral South, however, partly as it is an offshore project.
Coral South — which moved to final investment decision in 2017 — is based on the 450 Bcm of resources in the Coral field in Area 4 offshore Mozambique.
In 2016, Eni and its Area 4 partners signed an agreement with BP to take the entire volume of LNG to be produced by Coral South for over 20 years.
Tonela said the floating LNG vessel for the project was due to arrive later this year from a shipyard in South Korea.
Security situation
While Coral South proceeds as planned, the two other planned projects face delays.
TotalEnergies CFO Jean-Pierre Sbraire said in April that its Mozambique LNG project would be delayed by “at least a year” because of the security situation.
The company had targeted first LNG from the project in 2024.
The planned ExxonMobil-led 15.2 million mt/year Rovuma LNG facility, meanwhile, remains on hold with no final investment decision yet.
Both are located in northeastern Mozambique, close to the town of Palma and around 60km from the port town of Mocimboa da Praia, which until recently was occupied by insurgents.
Tonela said progress was being made to improve security to allow TotalEnergies to resume work at Mozambique LNG.
“We are fully committed to restoring a sustainable security situation so that we can resume the project as soon as the situation allows,” he said.
Tonela said Mozambique had received “strong support” from Rwanda in fighting the insurgency, enabling government to retake Mocimboa da Praia.
“This is significant progress that we have made with international support, and we are improving the security situation every day,” he said.
Tonela added that Mozambique was working to establish further security around the site of Mozambique LNG on the Afungi peninsula. Source: S&P Global Platts
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Benin Terminal commissions two Konecranes container handlers at port of Cotonou
Benin Terminal, a subsidiary of Bolloré Ports and the operator of the Port of Cotonou’s container terminal, has recently commissioned two Konecranes empty container handlers (reach stackers). The container handling equipment arrived in Cotonou in mid-August, after which they were installed and training provided for the operators.
With a total cost of 300 million CFA Francs (€467,000) financed by Benin Terminal, these two cutting-edge technology machines can reach stacking heights of up to seven standard containers, thus maximising space and increasing the terminal handling capacity.
According to Benin Terminal, this new equipment will improve productivity, increase delivery rates and reduce the time required to process goods. They will also strengthen the performance of the port of Cotonou, as well as helping support the country’s competitiveness and boosting trade in West Africa.
“Despite the Covid-19 pandemic, Benin Terminal is going ahead with its investment programme and continues to work towards modernising the port activities of the Independent Port of Cotonou,” said general manager Yann Magarian.
“These new handlers of 16 tons each will make our handling operations more fluid and improve the quality of services for our shipowners and receivers.”
Benin Terminal is involved in a public-private partnership at Cotonou that enables it to meet the requirements of its customer base of shipowners, importers and exporters. Thanks to an investment of 95 billion CFA Francs (€145 million) since 2013 by Benin Terminal, the container terminal has become a regional logistics growth hub for Niger, Mali, Burkina Faso and Nigeria.
Benin Terminal has contributed to making Cotonou a more efficient, modern and attractive port for the economic development of Benin. The company employs 677 Beninese nationals and leads a subcontracting policy that generates 1,000 indirect jobs.
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Cameroon’s Kribi port terminal bolstered by five new RTGs
Earlier this year (May) the Cameroon port of Kribi Container Terminal (KCT) had its container terminal handling capacity considerably increased with the arrival of five new Rubber Tyre Gantries (RTGs) to assist with handling the growth in traffic at the terminal.
In 2020 Kribi posted a 56.27% increase in handling volumes based on the previous year 2019. The terminal is relatively new and will naturally reflect high percentage increases as it further develops but the 2020 result despite the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic is encouraging.
The five new RTGs each have a 50-tonne lifting capacity. The port also took delivery of a mobile harbour crane.
KCT in the deepwater port of Kribi, which now employs a total of almost 300 people, is one of the newest container terminals in the Gulf of Guinea region, and is continuing to record a sustained growth in traffic.
Management of the terminal ascribe its success to what they say is the operational excellence of the teams at the container terminal and the synergy of actions between customs and port authorities and terminal users that enables reduced processing times for ships, entry and exit of containers.
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Maritime sector’s commitment on climate change: Highlight of IMO new video
“The IMO community is highly committed to tackling climate change,” IMO Secretary-General Kitack Lim said in an interview for Making Waves: The Future of Shipping, a news-style video launched at IMO Headquarters on 13 September as part of London International Shipping Week.
This programme showcases the collaborative efforts already in place across the maritime industry to decarbonise.
The IMO segment outlines the latest mandatory energy efficiency measures for ships, including the ship carbon intensity indicator rating system. The video explains how IMO is supporting efforts to look at alternative fuels and the application of new technologies, highlighting the global projects which aim to ensure no one is left behind in shipping’s transition.
The Future of Shipping sends a clear message about the need for action in tackling climate change to reduce the international shipping industry’s footprint on the environment.
At Africa Ports & Ships we believe that the IMO news-style video should be on the agenda of schools and colleges throughout the Continent of Africa and beyond in order that the potential generations of engineers and seafarers may be encouraged to take the maritime route in their careers.
This programme was produced in collaboration with the UK Chamber of Shipping, the British Ports Association, and Content With Purpose.
Readers are invited watch the video interview with IMO Secretary-General Kitack Lim. [5:22]
Then see the IMO segment, Cutting shipping’s GHG emissions – IMO’s role: [4:30]
And finally, the full programme The Future of Shipping [30 minutes],
Reported by Paul Ridgway
London
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Debmarine diamond recovery ship Benguela Gem arrives in Cape Town
Debmarine’s latest diamond recovery vessel, which we highlighted in a report yesterday (Monday 20 September 2021) arrived in port at Cape Town on Saturday night, bearing the name BENGUELA GEM (IMO 9854911).
The specialist ship was built at the Damen-owned Mangalia Shipyards in Romania from where she departed on 19 August on what was said to be a month-long voyage. On schedule she arrived off Cape Town on Saturday 18 September and entered port during the hours of darkness.
Benguela Gem has gone alongside the De Beers berth in Duncan Dock (L) where technicians have already commenced placing topside modules, which had been prepared in advance, onto her deck in readiness for her transformation into a fully equipped subsea diamond mining vessel.
With the modules on board the vessel is already looking different to the picture shown here and taken for us by ‘Dockrat’. We will in due course report further on the development of this ship including a collection of photographs. – trh
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WHARF TALK: New charter vessel for MACS – ARAMIS
Story by Jay Gates
Pictures by ‘Dockrat’
A new vessel, on charter to a well-known shipping company is always an interesting sighting, as is that same vessel carrying a visible deck cargo that is one of South Africa’s unsung export successes, and also for that vessel to be diverting off the normal schedule port rotation of the charterer, simply in order to deliver that cargo directly to its intended market.
On 17th September at 03h00 the multi-purpose cargo ship ARAMIS (IMO 9438391) arrived at Cape Town, from Durban, and proceeded directly to G berth at the Multi-Purpose Terminal in the Duncan Dock to begin her onload of both containers and project cargo.
Despite her displaying the famous MACS logo on her hull, her funnel colours did not display the famous Rhino logo that identifies all MACS vessels, but rather that of her owners, thus exposing her as a newly chartered vessel.
In fact so new was her charter, as she had only arrived from the Far East in mid-July and went on charter in Maputo, in Mozambique, before heading to both Richards Bay and Durban on her first rotation on the MACS GAL service, linking the US Gulf of Mexico with Southern Africa. Her recent arrival in all Southern African ports was not only her first, but her first on her maiden voyage operating under the MACS houseflag.
Built in 2011 by Yanhua Shipbuilding at Nantong in China, Aramis is 183 metres in length and has a deadweight of 34,017 tons. She is powered by a single STX MAN-B&W 6S50MC-C 6 cylinder 2 stroke main engine, producing 12,889 bhp (9,480 kW) to drive a fixed pitch propeller for a service speed of 13.6 knots.
Owned and managed by Interunity Management (Deutschland) Corporation GmbH (IMC), of Bremen in Germany, Aramis is one of three sisterships in the company, with her sisters named ‘Athos’ and ‘Porthos’, a connection that literary followers of Alexandre Dumas will immediately recognise and understand.
Her funnel colours clearly show the logo of IMC, and not that of MACS, and if it wasn’t for her funnel logo, one would be forgiven in thinking that Aramis has always been a MACS vessel, as she looks very much the part of one of their multi-purpose vessel fleet.
As a multi-purpose vessel, Aramis has a container carrying capacity of 974 TEU, across five holds, and the ability to carry both bulk cargoes, and breakbulk cargoes, especially project freight cargoes. This is clearly to be seen with her deck cargo of container and at least nine Robertson & Caine ocean going ‘blue water’ catamarans, split between Leopard 45s and Leopard 50s.
This is the fourth such deck cargo of these sailing vessels seen being loaded in Cape Town for export to the Mediterranean, and to the US Florida coast. Built locally at Woodstock in Cape Town, Robertson & Caine have built over 2,500 of their famous Leopard class of catamaran, with the astonishing record that every single one of them has been for export. A magnificent sales record, of which very few South Africans are aware.
The Leopard 45 catamaran is 13.72 metres in length (45 feet), with a mast height of 21.34 metres (70 feet) and she carries a total upwind sail area of 120.5 m2. They have a displacement of 14.9 tons and for those occasions when power is needed, the Leopard 45 comes with two Yanmar 4JH45 4 cylinder 4 stroke main engines producing 45 bhp (33 kW).
The larger Leopard 50 catamaran is 15.4 metres (50 feet) in length, with a mast height of 25.51 metres (77 feet) and she carries a total upwind sail area of 154.2 m2. The Leopard 50 has a displacement of 20.6 tons and they are powered by two Yanmar 4JH57 4 cylinder 4 stroke main engines producing 57 bhp (42 kW).
On completion of her onload, Aramis sailed from Cape Town on 18th September at 12h00 on her northbound schedule. Her deck cargo has an obvious diversion to her normal MACS GAL schedule to the US Gulf of Mexico coast, as she was displaying her next port of call as being Dog Bay, located on the Caribbean island of Virgin Gorda, in the British Virgin Islands (BVI). This is clearly an inducement port call, as there is no existing harbour at this location, and the BVI are not normally offered as a regular port of call for the GAL service.
A quick look at Virgin Gorda shows the Virgin Gorda Yacht Harbour, in the main settlement of Spanish Town, where the North Boatyard has a large number of Robertson & Caine catamarans already located there, and probably explains her planned call at this location to offload at least a few of her newbuild catamaran deck cargo.
Being deployed on the MACS GAL service, her port rotation after Dog Bay on this current northbound voyage, is showing as Houston (Texas), New Orleans (Louisiana), Houston (second call), Panama City (Florida) where she is probably completing the offload of catamarans, and then back to Southern Africa via Walvis Bay, Cape Town, Durban, Maputo and Richards Bay.
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IN CONVERSATION: How big is the Islamic threat in Mozambique? And why are Rwandan troops there?
Phil Clark, SOAS, University of London
Rwanda has sent troops to Mozambique to assist the government in fighting against a four-year Islamist militant insurgency. Political scientist Phil Clark provides insights into the threat and why Rwanda is supporting Mozambique.
Do the insurgents in Mozambique represent a new front of Islamic terrorism on the continent?
Since 2017, jihadist militias in the northern Mozambique province of Cabo Delgado have mounted an armed insurgency against the Mozambican government. Their stated objective is to instil Sharia law across northern Mozambique. This is said to be in response to the region’s chronic poverty, unemployment and weak public services under the Frelimo-led government in Maputo.
The Mozambican insurgents represent a new armed Islamic front, with entirely local motivations and command structures. However, their propaganda invokes common tropes of regional and global jihad.
They often claim responsibility for attacks using the name given to them by the local population, ‘Al-Shabaab’. But there is no evidence that they have any direct links to Al-Shabaab in Somalia.
Recently, Islamic State (ISIS) claimed responsibility for jihadist attacks in Mozambique.
But, again, there appears to be little direct connection between the Mozambican jihadists and the Islamic State. ISIS has previously attempted to claim responsibility for attacks by unassociated Islamist groups elsewhere in Africa, for example the Allied Democratic Forces in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo
How big a threat do they represent?
The jihadists pose a significant threat to local civilians and foreign economic interests in Cabo Delgado. The four-year low-intensity civil war has killed more than 3,000 civilians, displaced 800,000 and caused widespread food insecurity.
Meanwhile, the energy giants ExxonMobil and Total have suspended their liquid natural gas projects in Cabo Delgado. ExxonMobil is investing US$30billion and Total US$20billion.
The insurgents have cited the perception that local people will fail to benefit from government deals with the multinational companies as one catalyst for their attacks.
The combination of widespread violence and threats to foreign businesses have led to a patchwork of international military and security interventions. This includes reports of:
- the Mozambican government’s use of Russian and South African mercenaries
- the presence of Portuguese military trainers, and
- Total’s hiring of a former French foreign legionnaire to coordinate security for its gas plant on the Afungi peninsula.
In addition, Rwanda and the Southern African Development Community (SADC) –- including South African special forces – have deployed peacekeepers to Cabo Delgado.
This raises major concerns over a seeming lack of coordination among these armed actors.
Why is the Rwandan government getting involved?
There is vociferous debate about this.
The Rwandan government frames this as a ‘responsibility to protect’ mission. This, it argues, has been inspired by the international community’s failure to protect civilians in Rwanda during the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi.
The Rwandan intervention in Mozambique came shortly after French President Emmanuel Macron’s visit to Kigali in May 2021. Some commentators have suggested that Rwanda, funded by France, has intervened to shore up France’s interests, principally the gas reserves of French-owned Total.
The Rwandan government has chafed against the claim that it is simply doing France’s neo-colonial bidding. It has stressed the humanitarian basis of its intervention.
There is scant evidence of direct French backing for Rwanda’s military campaign. Nevertheless, France held a series of high-level talks with Rwanda and South Africa about the Cabo Delgado conflict in the months preceding their interventions in Mozambique. This suggests close coordination between Paris and these actors, reflecting the enormous French interests at stake.
In May this year Macron discussed military solutions to the crisis with a number of African heads of state at a summit in Paris. They included Mozambican President Filipe Nyusi, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and Rwandan President Paul Kagame. This was succeeded by similar talks with Kagame and Ramaphosa in Kigali and Pretoria several weeks later.
Crucial to Rwanda’s involvement in Cabo Delgdao are growing ties between Rwanda and Mozambique after the two countries signed a memorandum of understanding in 2018.
Earlier this year Nyusi made a lightning-stop visit to Kigali to ask for Rwanda’s military assistance in Cabo Delgado. Nyusi had previously stated his preference for bilateral rather than multilateral military intervention. He is perhaps concerned about ceding too much control to a SADC mission led by regional powerhouse South Africa.
He also noted Rwanda’s track record of conducting highly disciplined and effective peacekeeping missions. These have included Rwandan battalions operating in the Central African Republic outside the broader UN peacekeeping mission, similar to Rwanda’s current support for Mozambican forces outside of SADC.
Alongside its humanitarian objectives, the Rwandan government stands to benefit in security and diplomatic terms from its involvement in Cabo Delgado.
The intervention fits a pattern of Rwanda’s ‘responsibility to protect’ role in peacekeeping missions in Darfur, Mali, CAR and Haiti. These have bolstered its international image and afforded it considerable international leverage. For example, in 2010 when foreign donors considered prosecutions and suspending aid to Rwanda because of its alleged crimes in eastern Congo, Kigali threatened to withdraw its peacekeepers from Darfur.
The Cabo Delgado campaign is also consistent with Rwanda’s recent talk of tackling Islamist threats at home and in the wider region.
In regional geopolitical terms, Rwanda will have delighted in reports that its troops in northern Mozambique have proven more effective than those of SADC, with which it has often had a testy relationship.
Finally, Rwanda’s intervention bolsters its bilateral relations with Mozambique and France. A key catalyst for Rwanda’s diplomatic push with Mozambique in recent years has been the concern that Maputo had become a launching pad for exiled Rwandan dissidents. This has included members of the opposition Rwanda National Congress. Closer security ties have included Rwanda’s request that Mozambique rein in opposition members on its soil.
Kagame has for years lambasted France for failing to apologise for its complicity in the 1994 genocide. It therefore took some genocide survivors by surprise when he warmly welcomed Macron’s remarks on the issue. They had misgivings about whether Macron had fully acknowledged and apologised for France’s role in the genocide.
Kagame’s warm comments preceded the announcement of a new €500 million French development package to Rwanda.
What are the implications of its involvement?
The Rwandan forces have so far proven effective in tackling the jihadist insurgents. This has led the Mozambican government to claim that Rwanda’s entrance has fundamentally altered the direction of the conflict and improved the security situation for civilians and foreign companies.
The concurrent operations by Rwandan and SADC forces, however, could pose problems in the coming months. Various SADC leaders – as well as Mozambique’s largest opposition party Renamo – have criticised the arrival of Rwandan troops. They argue that this should have been an exclusively SADC effort.
These issues were clearly on the mind of Rwandan Foreign Minister Vincent Biruta who travelled to Pretoria in early June to discuss Rwanda-South Africa cooperation in Mozambique. This came shortly after Rwandan military chiefs conducted their first reconnaissance trip to Cabo Delgado.
But military force can achieve only so much. This has been made clear in comparable cases of Islamist violence in the Horn of Africa, Nigeria and the Sahel.
Systemic political and socio-economic interventions are necessary to address years of Frelimo neglect in northern Mozambique. These have produced the deprivation and marginalisation that underpin the insurgency.
Mozambicans themselves are clearly the key actors in this situation. Nevertheless, Rwanda and SADC should use their diplomatic leverage to encourage Nyusi to address the structural causes – and not only the violent manifestations – of the conflict. This includes ensuring that the immense natural gas wealth that will flow once the conflict abates benefits not only Nyusi’s government and multinational corporations but, most importantly, everyday Mozambicans.
Phil Clark, Professor of International Politics, SOAS, University of London
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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UNCTAD: Strengthening resilience in commodity-dependent countries
The UNCTAD* Global Commodities Forum 2021 tackles the many facets of commodity dependence and the vulnerabilities of countries whose economies rely on primary goods exports.
From the UNCTAD document mentioned below we learn that a country is considered to be commodity export dependent when more than 60% of its total merchandise exports are composed of commodities.
Given that commodity dependence can have a negative impact on a country’s economic development, it is important to monitor the evolution of such dependence in countries throughout the world. In particular, detailed statistics on commodity dependence provide an invaluable tool for a comprehensive analysis of its causes and consequences and contribute to the policy debate about measures necessary to address it in the short and long terms.
From the coffee that wakes us up and the cotton that keeps us warm, to the lithium that charges our smartphones and the oil that fuels our cars, the world depends on commodities to stay connected and keep moving. Of course it is a given that commodities drive freight and shipping.
According to UNCTAD over the past decade the nominal value of world commodity exports has increased by 20%, reaching $4.38 trillion in 2018-2019.
Such dependence also means that primary goods, whose prices are highly volatile, drive the economies of an increasing number of countries.
According to UNCTAD’s State of Commodity Dependence 2021 – at 248 pages SEE HERE, 101 of the 195 nations comprising UNCTAD’s membership are now commodity dependent.
In this document Africa is dealt with in Section 1.3.1 on page 9 which outlines commodity dependence and Member States are listed with profiles from Section 2.3 on page 45. The Standard International Trade and Classification lists agricultural products, fuels, minerals, ores and metals as what we would call commodities.
Global Commodities Forum
UNCTAD’s new secretary-general, Rebeca Grynspan, said at the opening of the Global Commodities Forum 2021; ‘To be commodity rich is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it gives countries the possibility to use it wisely when it allows for economic diversification and to benefit people’s wellbeing. But on the other hand, it is often too heavy to handle and wielded by external powers.’
Held from 13 to 15 September, the forum convened under the theme Strengthening resilience in commodity-dependent countries.
Rapid upswings and distressing downturns
Commodity dependence can leave an economy highly exposed to shocks, such as the Covid-19 pandemic and sharp price fluctuations in international markets.
Ministerial conference
‘Small states are particularly vulnerable to the vagaries of international trade, susceptible to sudden increases in commodity prices,’ Barbados Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley told the forum, organised as part of UNCTAD’s 15th ministerial conference, UNCTAD15, which ends on 7 October and is hosted by her government.
UNCTAD’s free market commodity price index, for example, fell by almost 36% between January and April 2020 due to the Covid-19-induced economic contraction. The trend then reversed direction, and by July the index had doubled its value.
Correlation between price and growth
According to UNCTAD research, the correlation between commodity prices and economic growth may be as high as 70%.
‘So you can see the volatility that these countries are subject to because of their commodity dependence,’ Ms Grynspan said.
But the trap of commodity dependence can be and has been escaped, she added, citing the example of her native Costa Rica.
From coffee and bananas to medical instruments
‘In the 1950s, coffee and bananas used to account for about 88% of the Central American nation’s total exports, Ms Grynspan said, noting that the figure is now less than 12% and medical instruments have become the country’s main export.
Costa Rica escaped commodity dependence by investing in the technology, innovation and human capital needed to move away from primary goods exports, according to UNCTAD’s Commodities and Development Report 2021 issued in July.
The report, which highlights technology and innovation’s potential to help commodity-dependent countries diversify their economies spotlights other success stories, including Indonesia’s transformation from oil dependence to processed goods and Malaysia’s diversification from rubber and palm oil towards manufactured products, such as tyres and medical gloves.
Food security, access to water and the energy transition
Even as the planet showing signs of severe distress, millions of people around the world, mostly in rural areas in developing nations, still lack access to food, electricity water and sanitation. Demand for food, for example, is projected to increase by 60% as the global population approaches 10 billion by 2050.
When UNCTAD’s free market commodity price index doubled after April 2020, food prices increased by 41%, making food security even more challenging in many countries.
One of the key questions the forum aims to answer is what food-importing developing countries should do to increase their resilience to international commodity market price drops?
* UNCTAD – United Nations Conference on Trade and Development
Reported by Paul Ridgway
London
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USS Herschel ‘Woody’ Williams arrives in Walvis Bay
Akin to a wandering albatross, the USS HERSCHEL ‘WOODY’ WILLIAMS (ESB-4) arrived off the coast of Namibia last week and entered the port of Walvis Bay for a three-day maiden call at a Namibian port.
USS Hershel ‘Woody’ Williams is more than just a naval ship, the ship is a Lewis B. Puller-class expeditionary mobile base or transfer dock, which carries a mostly civilian crew despite being commissioned and commanded by the US Navy.
Assigned to the U.S. Africa Command area of responsibility, the ship has been calling at a number of ports around the African continent, showing the flag and helping to foster healthy relations with African coastal countries.
During her visit a number of joint exercises were held, including the first ever-Namibian Air Force helicopter landing on-board a U.S Navy vessel; a ‘Visit, Board Search and Seizure’ exercise conducted by the Namibian Navy on-board the ship, as well as a joint U.S. – Namibian Navy Passage Exercise.
The visit also offered the opportunity for senior military and government leadership to discuss future U.S – Namibian engagements, as well as to provide a platform for both parties to discuss imminent partnerships as well a shared commitment to security, safety and freedom of navigation in Namibian and south Atlantic waters.
Defence Attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Namibia, Lieutenant Colonel William Lange, said the visit of the USS Hershel ‘Woody’ Williams symbolised the United States’ commitment to collaborate with Namibia to combat illicit activities on the high seas and promote the sovereignty of Namibian territorial waters.
“By working together to promote security in the waters off Namibia’s coast, we enhance economic prosperity and ensure Namibia’s unfettered access to global markets, and we are looking forward to coming back to Namibia in the very near future,” he said.
The naval ship arrived in Walvis Bay from Luanda in Angola where a similar visit was conducted. The ship is currently carrying 48 civilians and 152 military crewmembers, which is 100 shy of her 300-passenger capacity. She departed for Cape Town on Saturday 18 September 2021.
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De Beers’ Damen-built diamond recovery ship heads for South Africa
Debmarine Namibia’s latest diamond recovery vessel has departed from the Damen Shipyards Mangalia in Romania on four-week maiden voyage to Cape Town, where she will complete fitting out with specialist equipment before heading to Namibia to commence operations off the diamond coast.
The handover ceremony was held on 18 and 19 August at the Damen Shipyards Mangalia hence her arrival in Cape Town may be expected quite soon. The fitting out process at the Mother City should see the latest and most sophisticated diamond recovery vessel commencing operations early in 2022.
The successful delivery marks the end of the shipbuilding phase of a landmark project that began over three years ago. Another landmark is that she is the first vessel to be delivered by Damen Shipyards Mangalia, the Romanian yard that joined the Damen group in 2018, to take on large and complex, engineered to order projects under the banner of the group’s Mid-Sized Vessels division.
Debmarine Namibia is a subsidiary of the well-known diamond mining and jewellery company De Beers. The Namibian subsidiary is owned in equal shares with the Government of the Republic of Namibia.
As yet not officially named, the Additional Mining Vessel (AMV#3) as it is technically known, will use sub-sea crawling extraction techniques to retrieve diamonds from the seabed off the coast of Namibia. These will then be processed on board. 177 metres in length, it is now the largest diamond recovery vessel in the world and the new flagship of the Debmarine Namibia fleet. The vessel is expected to operate for at least 30 years.
According to Damen, the build involved many challenges, ranging from the onset of COVID-19 early in the project to the management of many subcontractors, each contributing their specialist skills and products.
With the constraints of COVID-19 Damen also undertook the complete commissioning process, implementing incremental ways of working to ensure that it was all completed on time.
“De Beers celebrates the completion of the vessel which, after a long period of design, construction and testing has now proceeded to sea,” said Michael Curtis, Head of the AMV3 Project. “The vessel build has been a truly multinational effort which has converged successfully at Damen Shipyards Mangalia.”
He said the build of this “magnificent” ship has enjoyed a high profile in Namibia as the largest ever single investment in the history of marine diamond recovery.
“Today marks a significant milestone in the project and for our company as the vessel starts its journey to Cape Town where it will be outfitted with the mission equipment. Damen’s dedication to building this high-quality and complex vessel, under very difficult circumstances and to do so with an excellent safety record is acknowledged and the quality of the ship is a testament to the skills of all who have been involved.”
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Disabled MSC KATERINA arrives under tow in Durban for repairs
Readers will recall our report about the 12,400-TEU container ship MSC KATRINA (IMO 9467445) which became disabled on 9 September while off the Cape South Coast.
The 140,096-gt box ship was sailing from Lomé in Togo, West Africa for the Far East, with Colombo showing as her next port, when she experienced an engine room fire that resulted in the ship becoming dead in the water.
The South African AMSOL-operated salvage tug SA AMANDLA left Cape Town harbour to go to the aid of the stricken vessel, whose fire was safely put out although it left the ship without any chance of continuing her voyage to the East.
It was decided to take the ship under tow to Durban where MSC maintains its own technical department and where repairs can be carried out. SA Amandla arrived on site and despite strong winds off the South African east coast, took MSC Katrina in tow and headed for Durban at a speed of around 4.4 knots, arriving off the KZN port on Wednesday 15 September 2021.
The following day, with quite heavy rain still falling, and with the support of four harbour tugs, the SA Amandla and her tow entered port to berth the container vessel at the Durban Container Terminal, Pier 2 North Quay.
The 366-metre long, 48-metre wide ship was moved again on Saturday 18 September, this time to Pier 1, berths 102 and 103, where she will apparently remain while undergoing repairs. According to the Transnet National Ports Authority she has been booked for repairs over a period of one month.
The accompanying photographs were all taken by Trevor Jones, the first three above in the rain of Thursday 16 September, and the others below under the blue sky of Saturday 18 September 2021. The latter show the giant ship being manoeuvred into position towards Pier 1. – trh
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WHARF TALK: Offshore support vessel heading for Angola – GREATSHIP MANISHA
Cape Town is a regular port of call for all of the multitude of types of offshore support vessel that operate for the oil and gas industry. The majority of them are either calling in for bunkers and stores, whilst en-route from one contract in one part of the world, and heading to another part of the world to undertake the next contract, or they are coming down from the West African oil and gas fields, to undertake major maintenance, drydocking and annual surveys.
However, most people forget that South Africa also has a small oil and gas industry of its own, located off the Southern Cape coast. Albeit a small industry player in comparison to most other states, there are specialised vessels operating out of Mossel Bay harbour in support of that very operation, and these offshore support vessels also require the need to head for Cape Town for major maintenance, drydocking and annual surveys.
Just one month ago, on 16th August at 17h00 the offshore multi-purpose diving support and platform supply vessel GREATSHIP MANISHA (IMO 9466465) arrived at Cape Town from Mossel Bay and entered the harbour, going alongside the Eastern Mole. She had arrived for a major overhaul which was to take many weeks.
After a short while at the Eastern Mole, Greatship Manisha shifted across the Duncan Dock to E berth, where a bevy of heavy duty mobile cranes, and a variety of engineering support equipment were waiting to start cutting down railings, take down deck housings, and remove an extensive pile of both internal, and external, steelwork in anticipation of her forthcoming overhaul, with the volume of steel removed, including removal of her large deck crane, indicating a major role change about to get underway.
After a week at E berth, she shifted again, this time to the Landing Wall, where she was prepared for entering the Sturrock Drydock, which she duly did a few days later. After a week, she floated out of drydock and made her way into the Ben Schoeman dock, where she went alongside the Dormac support quay at 502 berth for completion of outstanding engineering works.
Only on 18th September, after 33 days alongside, did Greatship Manisha leave the confines of Cape Town harbour and head out into Table Bay, where she completed a short sea trial, and surprised most people by displaying her next port of call as not being a return to Mossel Bay, but rather to Luanda in Angola.
Built in 2010 by Keppel Singmarine Shipyard in Singapore, based on a Marin Teknikk MT6012 design, Greatship Manisha is 93 metres in length and has a deadweight of 4,600 tons. She is powered by four main engines, namely two Wärtsilä 8L26 8 cylinder 4 stroke engines producing 3,526 bhp (2,600 kW) each, and two Wärtsilä 8L20 8 cylinder 4 stroke engines producing 2,012 bhp (1,480 kW) each, giving her a service speed of 13.8 knots. She also has an emergency generator providing 189 kW.
She is a DP2 vessel with three forward tunnel thrusters, each of 1,050 kW each, and two aft Wärtsilä FS275 azimuth propulsion thrusters of 2,600 kW each. She is one of two sisterships, and has a moonpool for diving and ROV operations, provides 1,020 m2 of deck space which is capable of taking 2,200 tons of deck cargo, and she is able to accommodate up to 66 persons.
Owned by Greatship Global Offshore Service of Singapore, she was unique in that she was taken on bareboat charter by Marine Crew Services (MCS) of Cape Town in 2017, for an initial two year contract with PetroSA, and her flag was switched from that of Singapore to South Africa, with Greatship Manisha being re-registered in Mossel Bay.
At the time she became only the third ship on the South African register, not involved in the fishing industry, or under South African government ownership. With an operating crew complement of 17, the switch of flag allowed MCS to increase the number of her South African crew employed aboard, from initially two, up to nine, with the Second Officer, Third Officer, Third Engineer, and six Deck Ratings being locally employed.
The plan of MCS at the time was to increase the South African crew complement as experience was gained, and command certification was attained, so that eventually the whole operating crew would be 100% South African.
Additionally, as part of the programme of training future Merchant Navy Officers, SAMSA was to grant the vessel ‘Training Ship’ status, which meant that a further six young South African Deck and Engineering Cadets could be placed by MCS aboard the vessel, to gain the necessary sea time, and practical training experience, towards gaining their professional seagoing certification.
Whilst the owners of Greatship Manisha are Greatship Global Offshore Services of Singapore, they are a subsidiary of Greatship India Ltd., of Mumbai in India, who themselves are a subsidiary of the Great Eastern Shipping Company, also of Mumbai, and whose houseflag is flown by the vessel and displayed on her funnel.
Details of her recent contract with PetroSA, and her potential next deployment to Angola, and if that affects her South African manning arrangements are, as of yet, not known. However, her port of registry has reverted, once more, back to Singapore, which indicates a major change has occurred.
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AMSOL welcomes new anchor handling vessel tug supply vessel UMKHUSELI to the fleet
As part of AMSOL’s fleet renewal strategy, the company has recently purchased a modern Anchor Handling Tug Supply Vessel (AHTSV) which is a welcome addition to the fleet.
In AMSOL ownership the AHTSV has been named UMKHUSELI (IMO 9427055), a word which means Protector or Defender.
The ship has an overall length of 83.18 metres and a width of 22.02m.
Umkhuseli was previously named Ena Frontier from 1 February 2019 to 1 August 2021 when she entered into AMSOL ownership. Prior to 2019 her first name from 1 September 2013 was Toisa Envoy.
The 8-year old, 4,427-dwt (%,18-gt), DPII tug, built in 2013, will provide AMSOL seafarers with new opportunities for learning and development; supporting AMSOL’s talent pipeline and the development of maritime leaders of the future.
“The investment decision highlights our confidence in South Africa and envisaged future developments in the Oil & Gas and Shipping sectors in Africa where we compete by providing sustainable marine solutions,” said AMSOL’s Chief Executive Officer, Paul Maclons.
Umkhuseli, which arrived in Port Elizabeth from Singapore on Friday 17 September 2021, flying the flag of St Vincent Grenadines. The AHTSV is to be re-flagged in South Africa.
AMSOL says that not only is it the leading employer of South African seafarers, but it has also implemented a strategy to increase the number of its vessels on the South African ships’ registry as an integral part of the company’s stated intent to grow the maritime economy.
The local flagging of the Umkhuseli will bring to 12 the number of AMSOL owned specialist vessels on the South African Ships’ Register, including tugs, AHTSV, product tanker, emergency towing vessel and offshore supply launches.
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No Time To Die: new James Bond film with a helping hand from CMA CGM
CMA CGM official partner of No Time To Die, new James Bond film
When you get to see the latest James Bond movie, NO TIME TO DIE, look out for a few familiar sights, although they’ll be hard to miss.
Two container ships and about 1000 shipping containers, as well as a dozen crew from the ships are ‘extras’ who took part in the movie in which action scenes were filmed in Kingston harbour, Jamaica.
Filming took place at the CMA CGM-operated Kingston South Quay Terminal in Jamaica, a strategic transshipment hub for the CMA CGM Group in the Caribbean, located at the exit of the Panama Canal and the crossroads of the North/South and East/West lines.
The two ships involved were the CMA CGM FORT SAINT GEORGES and CMA CGM FORT DE FRANCE. Crew from the CMA CGM ships and 1,000 shipping containers were used for filming.
As official partner of the 25th James Bond film, CMA CGM granted filmmakers EON Productions unprecedented access to the Kingston Container Terminal in Jamaica to shoot an action sequence involving a seaplane and the vessel CMA CGM Fort Saint Georges during which Bond is ‘rescued from the ocean’.
No Time To Die is directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga and stars Daniel Craig, who returned for his fifth and final film as Ian Fleming’s James Bond.
A dedicated international CMA CGM team, led by Tanya Saadé Zeenny, Executive Officer of the CMA CGM Group, was formed at the Head Office in Marseille and CMA CGM-operated terminals in Kingston and Dunkirk to provide support for the unique partnership, and are now eagerly awaiting the film’s global release.
The film will be released in cinemas in the UK from 30 September 2021 through Universal Pictures International, and in the US from Metro-Goldwyn Mayer (MGM) on 8 October 2021, via their United Artists Releasing banner.
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IN CONVERSATION: How a new app helps fishing boats avoid endangered species
Tara Marshall, University of Aberdeen
The discarding of fish at sea – known as “bycatch” – happens when fish have no commercial value or annual quotas for a commercial species are limited. It is widely regarded as a wasteful and unsustainable practice. A shocking 267,000 tonnes of fish were dumped in the North Sea in 2010. To reduce this waste, in 2013 EU member states agreed to the introduction of the landing obligation in EU waters. In January 2019, this was fully enforced, effectively serving as a ban on discarding commercial species.
The implementation of this ban created the so-called “choke species” problem. Choke species are fish with catches limited by annual quotas but which cannot easily be avoided or, under the landing obligation, discarded. This potentially results in the early tie-up of a fishing boat if that vessel’s annual quota for the choke species is exhausted before their quotas for other fish species are used up.
One way of reducing the catch of choke species is for fishers is to avoid areas and times where the likelihood of encountering the species is highest. But this poses a technical challenge: how can a fishing boat know when and where these unwanted choke species are without catching them in the first place?
Real-time reporting
Many fishing vessels report and share catch observations and position data as it is recorded using an automated communication system known as real-time reporting. This shared data is then processed to produce maps showing hotspots where catch rates are high. First implemented in the Alaskan pollock fishery in the mid-1990s, this has since been used to reduce bycatch of salmon during their annual migrations.
In 2019, the west coast of Scotland fishery was awarded a bycatch-only quota for cod, meaning that there was effectively zero quota available to fishers and that they would have to find ways to reduce cod catches to the lowest possible levels. If fishers were able to share real-time reporting information about when and where they were catching cod in real-time, then areas of high cod catches could be avoided.
Early consultations with Scottish fishers showed general support for using such a system on the west coast. However, fishers were reluctant to share information they regard as a personal or even a financial asset. Overcoming this hesitancy was essential if real-time reporting was going to be implemented in Scottish waters.
We set about designing a real-time reporting app, getting fishers to help design it as a way of encouraging them to use it. Since most fishers would be using the software as a phone app, it was important that it was easy for them to enter the data. It was also essential that the software satisfied their information requirements, security concerns, and limited tolerance for sharing catch and position data. Thanks to their input, we added the spurdog fish (Squalus acanthias) to the system, since it is a species of conservation concern and seasonally present on the west coast waters in large clusters.
The bespoke software that came out of this collaborative process is called Bycatch Avoidance Tool using mapping – BATmap. It was launched in June 2020 and participation was voluntary, with only fishers who agreed to contribute data being enrolled.
Vessels submit their catch data within two hours of the haul coming onboard, while position data is automatically submitted by monitoring units specially installed on each vessel. When a vessel reports that it has caught a lot of cod, an alert is automatically sent to all participating fishers detailing the volume and location of the catch. Fishers can then consider this information, along with other factors, when deciding when and where to fish.
Results so far
Since its launch, more than 2,971 catch reports have been submitted to BATmap, with 85 and 29 alerts triggered for cod and spurdog respectively. There are currently 14 vessels using BATmap. One fisher told us that though it will take more time for the system to develop fully, his initial concerns about sharing information had been overcome.
Looking ahead, we are cautiously optimistic that real-time reporting will become firmly established as part of day-to-day fishing operations on the west coast of Scotland. Follow-on funding has been secured to continue the development of BATmap, which will include a data governance policy and a five-year strategic plan for embedding it more firmly.
Tara Marshall, Senior Lecturer in Fisheries Science, University of Aberdeen
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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WHARF TALK: another of the ‘ stream of tankers’ – STI EXCEL
Story by Jay Gates
Pictures by ‘Dockrat’
The downside is that some 15 months on, or over 440 days later, the Astron Energy Refinery, at Milnerton in Cape Town, still shows no sign of coming back onstream after the fatal accident of 2nd July 2020. For shipping buffs, the upside is that the stream of tankers bringing the necessary fuel supplies of all persuasions continues to arrive at Cape Town. In any normal year, this level of product tanker deliveries, from oil ports all over the world, would not be seen.
On 13th September at 14h00 the large LR1 products tanker STI EXCEL (IMO 9735579) arrived off Cape Town, from the Sarroch Oil refinery in Italy, and after a two hour wait offshore for her berth, she entered Cape Town and was alongside the 250 metre Tanker berth, in the Duncan Dock, by 17h00 that day.
Built in 2015 by STX Shipbuilding at Jinhae in South Korea, as one of eight sisterships, STI Excel is 219 metres in length and has a deadweight of 74,547 tons. She is powered by a single STX MAN-B&W 6S60ME-C8 6 cylinder 2 stroke main engine producing 12,954 bhp (9,660 kW), to drive a fixed pitch propeller for a service speed of 14 knots.
Her auxiliary machinery includes three MAN-B&W 6L23/30H generators providing 990 kW each, and a Cummins NT855 DMGE emergency generator providing 300 kW. She has a Kangrim E exhaust gas powered boiler, and a Kangrim P oil fired boiler. She has 12 cargo tanks and a cargo carrying capacity of 87,924 m3.
Owned by Scorpio Tankers Incorporated (STI) of Monaco, which gives STI Excel her name prefix, and whose company logo is prominent on her funnel, she is operated by Scorpio Marine Management of Mumbai, and managed by Scorpio Ship Management of Monaco.
Along with her seven fleet sisterships, all have names with the prefix of STI Ex, and are named Excel, Experience, Expedite, Exceed, Executive, Excellence, Express and Excelsior. Despite not normally operating through regions of known piracy, STI Excel still shows retrofitted burglar bars on all accommodation block portholes at boat deck level, and especially around all of her bridge windows that can be easily accessed at bridge deck level.
Deployed by STI as part of their Scorpio LR1 Pool, STI Excel, along with all other pool members, is used exclusively by the company in the spot market, hence her ‘one-off’ arrival in Cape Town from the Italian oil port of Sarroch.
The Sarroch refinery is located on the Italian island of Sardinia, and is situated some 20 kilometres south of the city of Cagliari. It is owned by Saras SpA, and has the highest production capacity of any other refinery within the Mediterranean area. It is capable of refining 300,000 barrels of oil per day (BPD), and produces 15% of the total production in Italy.
The majority of the Sarroch refinery production is Petroleum and Gasoline products, which account for 30% of production, and Jet/Gasoil/Diesel products, which account for 55% of production. Domestic Fuel and Liquid Petroleum Gas (LPG) make up only 7% of production, with the final 8% being Fuel Oil, provided for the adjacent Power Station that provides electricity and power to the residents, and industries, in the local area.
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Delivering Covid-19 vaccines: International organizations, vaccine manufacturers to intensify cooperation
It was reported by the WTO HQ in Geneva on 16 September that heads of the International Monetary Fund, World Bank Group, World Health Organization and World Trade Organization met the CEOs of leading vaccine manufacturing companies to discuss strategies to improve access to Covid-19 vaccines, especially in low and lower middle-income countries and in Africa.
This Task Force expressed concerns that without urgent steps the world is unlikely to achieve the end-2021 target of vaccinating at least 40% of the population in all countries, a critical milestone to end the pandemic and for global economic recovery.
Members of the Task Force noted that, despite adequate total global vaccine production in the aggregate, the doses are not reaching low- and lower middle-income countries in sufficient amounts, resulting in a crisis of vaccine inequity.
On this topic the Task Force encouraged countries that have contracted high amounts of vaccine doses, and vaccine manufacturers, to come together in good faith to urgently accelerate Covid-19 vaccine supplies to COVAX and AVAT, two multilateral mechanisms that are crucial for equitable distribution of vaccines.
For more on COVAX and AVAT readers are invited to SEE HERE
Task Force members welcomed the willingness of the CEOs to work collectively with them to end vaccine inequity and their readiness to form a technical working group with the Task Force to exchange and coordinate information on vaccine production and deliveries.
40% coverage
The Task Force stressed that if the 40% coverage threshold is to be reached in all countries by the end of 2021, the following actions need to be taken immediately by governments and vaccine manufacturers:
Release doses to low- and lower middle-income countries
Task Force members take note that countries with high vaccination rates have collectively pre-purchased over two billion doses in excess of what is required to fully vaccinate their populations.
The Task Force calls again on those countries to urgently:
(i) swap their near-term delivery schedules with COVAX and AVAT;
(ii) fulfill their dose donation pledges with unearmarked upfront deliveries to COVAX, and
(iii) release vaccine companies from options and contracts so those doses can be delivered to people in low- and lower middle-income countries.
In addition, vaccine manufacturers should prioritise and fulfil their contracts to COVAX and AVAT.
Transparency on supply of vaccines
To ensure that doses reach countries that need them the most, particularly low- and lower middle-income countries, the Task Force calls on vaccine manufacturers to share details on month-by-month delivery schedules for all vaccine shipments, especially for COVAX and AVAT.
In its remarks, WHO emphasised its call for a moratorium on booster doses until the end of 2021, with the exception of the immune-compromised, to help optimize supply to low-income countries.
Eliminate export restrictions, prohibitions
The Task Force calls on all countries to urgently address export restrictions, high tariffs and Customs bottlenecks on Covid-19 vaccines and the raw materials and supplies required for the production and timely distribution of vaccines.
It is anticipated that in Africa much, if not all, of this supply will depend to a great extent on air freight.
Regulatory streamlining and harmonisation
The Task Force calls on all regulatory authorities around the world to create regulatory consistency and standardization on the approval of vaccines, and to support the acceptance of the WHO Emergency Use Listing procedure
In parallel, efforts should be made to boost production of vaccines, diagnostics and treatments globally and expedite equitable delivery of such lifesaving tools to developing countries.
According to a statement from WHO on 17 September, so far COVAX has shipped more than 260 million doses to 141 countries.
Reported by Paul Ridgway
London
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GENERAL NEWS REPORTS – UPDATED THROUGH THE DAY
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EXPECTED SHIP ARRIVALS and SHIPS IN PORT
Port Louis – Indian Ocean gateway port
Ports & Ships publishes regularly updated SHIP MOVEMENT reports including ETAs for ports extending from West Africa to South Africa to East Africa and including Port Louis in Mauritius.
In the case of South Africa’s container ports of Durban, Ngqura, Ports Elizabeth and Cape Town links to container Stack Dates are also available.
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CRUISE NEWS AND NAVAL ACTIVITIES
QM2 in Cape Town. Picture by Ian Shiffman
We publish news about the cruise industry here in the general news section.
Naval News
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