SURABAYA: As container volume rises, Indonesia’s Tanjung Perak is working to improve productivity by streamlining its management, deploying new cranes and automating its operating system.
The port’s operator, state-owned PT Pelabuhan Indonesia III, last week drastically reduced its number of managers in an an effort to streamline the decision making process, according to a release on its website. The operator has been under pressure to upgrade the port and its services to reduce the dwell times at berth from eight days to four.
To this end, the company cut the number of supervisors from 64 to 26, assistant managers from 36 to 33, and reduced its number of managers by one from 12 to 11. The port also created two deputy manager positions to assist the port’s general manager.
Lamong Bay Terminal, which opened in May with 10 ship-to-shore cranes and five straddle carriers, was built within Tanjung Perak port as part of a government freight transport program to improve shipping across Indonesia’s waterways.
It is intended to ease congestion at the port, the main gateway for imports and exports into and out of eastern Indonesia and raised the port’s annual throughput capacity from 1.5 million 20-foot-equivalent units to 3.5 million TEUs. It can accommodate 5,000 TEU ships.
Container traffic there has increased in recent years, with volume up 8 percent to 3.13 million 20-foot-equivalent units in 2014 from 2.9 million TEUs in 2013. Future plans to increase efficiency revolve around an $8.25 million contract with Australia-based Realtime Business Solutions to provide a terminal operating system, and another deal with France-based Gaussin Manugistique to deliver 50 automated terminal trailers and 50 power packs.
The Java Integrated Industrial Port Estate, Tanjung Perak port, and Lamong Bay Terminal were all included in Indonesia’s master plan to accelerate and expand Indonesian economic development, which aims to attract foreign investment.
