South Africa’s container terminals showed continued positive momentum between 4–10 August 2025, surpassing expected throughput figures, according to the latest Cargo Movement Update (CMU).
The report, compiled by the South African Association of Freight Forwarders (Saaff) and Business Unity South Africa (Busa), indicates an average daily throughput of 13 121 TEUs during the reporting period.
This translates to a 14.75% daily improvement for Transnet Port Terminals (TPT), equating to roughly 1 683 more containers moved per day compared to previous performance benchmarks.
Among all the ports, Port Elizabeth (Gqeberha) stood out with the highest relative growth. It handled 692 containers per day, totaling 6 826 TEUs for the week, reflecting a massive 118% increase from the prior week.
Durban Container Terminal Pier 2 also saw strong gains, processing 38 299 TEUs with a daily average of 5 471 moves, marking a 19% improvement week-on-week.
Durban’s Pier 1 and the Port of Ngqura experienced increases of 20% and 12%, handling 13 167 and 15 071 TEUs respectively.
Meanwhile, the Cape Town Container Terminal (CTCT) showed only modest growth, moving 1 951 containers per day, totaling 13 656 TEUs, with a marginal 0.2% weekly increase.
Despite the overall positive performance, Jacob van Rensburg, Head of Research and Development at Saaff, noted that some operational issues persisted.
He attributed disruptions to bad weather, berth availability and equipment challenges. In Cape Town, vessel ranging and high swells caused interruptions, while equipment failures and poor weather hampered operations in Durban. Eastern Cape ports were similarly impacted by vacant berths and strong winds, affecting efficiency.
Source: Freight News