Australian ports among the worst in the world: ACCC

Australia’s ports have been ranked among the worst in the world for efficiency with Sydney’s Port Botany called out by the ACCC for being well off the global pace.

Congestion at Port Botany has become so bad that some shipping lines are skipping the port entirely.

Australia’s biggest ports have been rated among the worst-performing ports in the world and rank near the bottom of a league table of 351 global container facilities, with Sydney’s Port Botany and Adelaide highlighted as the most inefficient.

The findings are in the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s stevedoring report for 2021.

The ACCC report mentions a recent study by the World Bank and IHS Markit which showed that, even before the pandemic disruption, Australian container ports were relatively inefficient and well below international best practice.

The study ranked Australia’s largest container ports, Melbourne and Sydney, in the bottom 15 per cent and 10 per cent respectively out of the 351 global ports in the study.

Data published by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development and published by the ACCC reveals that the median in-port time for container ships visiting Australia was 1.4 days in 2020. This is more than four times as long as Japan, more than double compared to China and 67 per cent greater than the time ships spent in Singapore or New Zealand.

Data obtained by the ACCC shows average idle hours, which is the length of time a ship spends at berth, at Port Botany almost doubled from 11.9 hours pre-pandemic to 21.2 hours in 2020-21.

Congestion at Port Botany has become so bad that some shipping lines are skipping the port entirely.

“Industrial action on top of pre-existing congestion has unfortunately put enormous strain on our international container ports at a time when they can least cope with it, and in the case of Port Botany, some shipping lines have decided the delays make using the port commercially unviable,” Mr Sims said.

In terms of ranking, out of the 351 global container ports, Brisbane was the best Australian port at 246, followed by Melbourne ranked 302, Fremantle 326, Sydney 337 and Adelaide at 339.

Originally published as Australian ports among the worst in the world: ACCC