PATRICK has blamed high property, maintenance and operational costs for its decision to hike infrastructure fees at its Sydney, Fremantle, Melbourne and Brisbane container terminals.
From March 12, the stevedore is to apply the following surcharges on full containers:
- Sydney $41.10;
- Fremantle $7.50;
- Fisherman Islands (Brisbane) $38.25;
- East Swanson (Melbourne) $47.50.
Chief commercial officer Ashley Dinning said the surcharge would apply to both road and rail transport operators.
“We regret this change to our tariff but we have been left with no alternative in the current challenging economic environment, without sacrificing infrastructure investment and further performance improvements,” Mr Dinning said in a letter to customers.
According to Patrick, the surcharges recover a portion of the costs relating to:
- Capital investments already made on dedicated infrastructure that service landside interface operations;
- Excess charges over CPI that relate to our property and property related costs (including rent, land tax and council rates). These costs continue to increase considerably across Patrick’s terminals; and
- Maintenance and operational costs associated with providing our landside interface operations.
Infrastructure fee hikes were announced last year by both Patrick and DP World Australia.
Hutchison Ports Charges
Please be advised that effective 9 February 2018 Hutchison Ports Sydney will begin charging the Sideloader fee as per our existing landside tariff. Hutchison Ports now deploys an additional resource to this activity in both the manual handling area and ASC handling to minimise the risk of damage to carrier’s equipment.