DP World defends charges

The company’s Australian chief executive Paul Scurrah addressed the Ports Australia Biennial Conference and said that the stevedoring sector had seen tremendous change in the past decade, including the introduction of a third major player in the east coast container terminals and major consolidation of shipping lines. Increasing ship sizes had also triggered heavy investments in infrastructure.

Mr Scurrah said that a study of the earnings published by some stevedoring companies would “show the stevedores are making less money now than when we introduced infrastructure access charges”. Shrinking tariffs and increased depreciation and amortisation burdens were reducing returns.

“In other words, the investment we have made despite the fear-mongering of certain parts of the industry is still nowhere near fully recovered, and notwithstanding the productivity increases is still a long way from that,” he said.