A backlog of ships anchored off the Illawarra coast has grown because of the small coal stockpile and planned maintenance at Port Kembla’s busy coal terminal.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Port Kembla Port Corporation chief executive officer Dom Figliomeni said he could not remember more vessels being queued at once.
‘‘If you really looked at it, ideally you would have one ship at berth and probably three or four at anchor, which is what we used to have until recently,’’ he said.
Fifteen ships at anchor yesterday were waiting to access the Port Kembla Coal Terminal (PKCT).
Mr Figliomeni said the terminal was very busy, which meant any delays had a flow-on effect.
Issues including scheduled maintenance, logistical problems, rail system inadequacies outside the port and industrial action earlier this year might have contributed, he said.
‘‘The stockpile is very small, which means ships have to wait until we can consolidate the cargo.’’
Rail paths into the port and the berth’s high utilisation were both pressing issues.
A similar number of vessels were forced to wait offshore when rolling strike action crippled the terminal in February, although coal terminal general manager Peter Green said the present backlog was unrelated.
‘‘Coal receivals to stockyard are behind what is needed for the number of vessels at anchor,’’ he said.
‘‘In early May PKCT completed planned maintenance shutdowns that have limited some coal receival.’’
The terminal lost about five days this month due to maintenance, hitting loading and receivals.
At present the stockyard holds about 215,000 tonnes of coal, or about one-third of its working capacity.
‘‘So there is more room to receive coal, assign to vessels at anchor and proceed to load,’’ Mr Green said.
‘‘Ideally for such a number of vessels at anchor, PKCT would have coal being received into the stockyard and loaded out concurrently.’’
Mr Green said the 15 vessels at anchor represented about 18 to 20 days of loading.
On the issue of boosting capacity, he said PKCT had nearly finished an expression of interest process to determine the additional needs of the region’s coalmines.
PKCT is operated by BHP Billiton, Gujarat NRE, Xstrata, Centennial Coal, Tahmoor Coal and Peabody Energy.
