A PLANNED 48-hour stoppage by pilot boat operators and vessel traffic service officers at Fremantle Ports will be more of an annoyance than anything, according to Key Account Manager for EES Shipping, Amanda Bradfield. As long as it is only a 48-hour stoppage.

With the stop work planned for Sunday Ms Bradfield said shipping that was due to arrive into the port will get pushed back.

“It will be a complete knock-on effect that will obviously cause delays not only to the berthing but delays to land side movements and additional bunching that will happen.  But that’s business as usual when it comes to shipping,” Ms Bradfield said.

 The danger of greater disruption lies in the workers continuing to take industrial action as they press for significantly improved pay.

Ms Bradfield said at its worst containers were taking up to a month to arrive from Singapore.

“It depends on the line and some lines are moving okay. There’s no problem with the dwell time in Singapore, but other lines are experiencing more of a delay than others.”

The current industrial action leaves clients with additional delays.

“It leaves them with the possibility of running out of stock that they’ve been waiting for and the loss of money, loss of income, loss of revenue for the goods that are going to be stuck on a ship.

“I think the key takeaway is we will be able to rebound quickly, but if it’s any more than 48 hours, obviously other pressures come into play but the supply chain is not working very well at the moment and this just adds a little bit of insult to injury.”

With Christmas retail trade hovering, Ms Bradfield said there has definitely been more of a push to forward order the kind of cargo that does come in prior to Christmas.

“We are seeing some clients already jumping on that just to make sure that their cargo is here in time.

“It depends on the value of the goods. You’re obviously paying money to hold stock versus just waiting for it to come when it comes. But again, if you don’t have the cargo here, you can’t sell it.”

Ms Bradfield said she hadn’t seen any signs of ships bypassing Fremantle yet.

“These commercial decisions are made by the shipping lines and weighing up whether or not it’s better for them to wait out at Gage Roads for a couple of days or bypass Fremantle. With Fremantle being either the beginning port of their route or the end, we do tend to fall into that trap of being the one that they either bypass on the way around or bypass on the way back out again. But I haven’t seen any notices yet indicating that. “I think if the strike went on for longer than two days or was announced for longer than two days we’d probably see more, but there’s that knock-on effect to every window after the 48 hours that will also be cascading down.”