Mandatory standards for carriers and stevedores
Road carriers and stevedores servicing Port Botany are subject to mandatory performance standards that regulate road freight movements to and from the port.
The standards are embedded in the Ports and Maritime Administration Regulation 2012. They came into force in 2010 and were last updated in December 2015:
- Port Botany Landside Operations Mandatory standards under Part 3 of the Ports and Maritime Administration Regulation 2012 (PDF, 541.91 KB)
- Summary of changes made to standards in 2015 (PDF, 317.15 KB)
- Order issuing new mandatory standards 2015 (PDF, 113.51 KB)
- Mandatory Standards effective 18 December 2015 compared to standards effective from 1 April 2014 (PDF, 1.19 MB)
Mandatory standards were introduced under the Port Botany Landside Improvement Strategy (PBLIS) following a 2008 Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal (IPART) finding that:
- Bottlenecks at the port caused congestion on the wider Sydney road network
- Waiting times for trucks were often unreasonably long
- Stevedores were unable to service trucks within the timeslot booked due to a lack of clear rules around terminal delays
- Ineffective working relationships between stevedores and truck drivers were hurting supply chain operations
- There was no performance data available about landside operations.
Read the IPART report (PDF, 1.09 MB) and the NSW Government response (PDF, 94.57 KB).
Detailed information
Operational performance measures
Operational performance measures improve efficiency at Port Botany’s landside interface by encouraging the port supply chain’s stakeholders to be accountable to each other for their on time and servicing performance.
The operational performance measures are:
Road carriers: early arrivals, late arrivals, no shows, and cancellation of bookings (listings)
Stevedores: minimum number of slots offered per hour, truck turnaround time, failure or refusal to perform truck servicing, and time zone cancellations.
There are approximately 350 road carriers regularly operating at at the three stevedores in Port Botany. The stevedores are DP World Australia, Sydney Autostrad Terminal and Sydney International Container Terminals Limited.
Financial penalties
Road carriers and stevedores are required to adhere to their operational performance measures to be compliant with the mandatory standards. If the standards are not met and the carrier or stevedore is found liable, they must pay a financial penalty to the other party.
Invoicing
Financial penalties are issued through each stevedore’s invoicing process. Stevedores invoice road carriers that have not met operational performance measures detailing penalties they owe. They ‘self-invoice’ for financial penalties they owe to road carriers.
The CMCC monitors and audits these invoicing processes. If it finds that a party has not issued a penalty, issued a penalty incorrectly or has not paid a penalty, they may be fined.
Impact of mandatory standards
By 2018, the road efficiency reforms at Port Botany will have delivered almost $100 million in economic benefits to importers, exporters, taxpayers and consumers (Deloitte Access Economics report).
The reforms have resulted in:
Less congestion on Sydney roads
Faster truck turnaround times – down from an average of 38 minutes in 2011-12 to 25 minutes in 2017-18 – and shorter truck queues:
More efficient terminal operations
More capacity during peak-hour operations
Higher cost savings and lower labour and capital costs as throughput continues to increase
Better working relationships between road carriers, stevedores and other players in the supply chain.