Port just keeps on expanding - Port of Melbourne - Brief Article

Business Asia, June, 2000

THE VICTORIAN Government wants to attract a third stevedore to enhance the Melbourne Port Corporation's reputation as one of the finest ports in the world.

Premier Steve Bracks said the Melbourne facility was the best deepwater port in the Southern Hemisphere and a major asset in developing trade into Asia.

"But we want to make it more productive. We see it as our mission over the next four years to increase productivity in the Port of Melbourne," Bracks said. "We are seeking further investment opportunities there. We'd like to see a third competitor to the current two operators, Patrick and P&O. And there's some good international competitors that we'll try to attract there. That will help bring port user charges down and build more efficiency into it."

Speaking in Europe recently at the Terminal Operations Conference in Rotterdam, MPC chief executive Chris Whitaker said expressions of interest were being sought from prospective bidders to develop the proposed Westgate container terminal in the Webb Dock area that has the potential to handle 500,000 TEUs (20-foot equivalent units) a year.

Annual throughput at Melbourne is now approaching 1.3 million TEUs, of which more than 60 per cent is international trade, and volumes are growing by some 100,000 TEUs a year.

Australia's largest container port, the MPC happily claims the status as one of the nation's cheapest ports.

The port, which handles 39 per cent of the nation's container trade, won the praise of the Bureau of Transport and Communications Economics (BTE) last year when it found Melbourne offered the lowest total port and related container charges of any Australian port, the lowest cargo based charges and the second-lowest ship based charges.

MPC reports that wharfage charges have reduced by more than 44 per cent over the past three years with the wharfage charge of A$25.90 on a 20-foot container being the lowest of any of the major container ports.

These charges are a symptom of greater productivity at a restructured organisation that has evolved from being run by hundreds of people to a more commercially focused port run by 81 people.