Communicate Blog

I’ve been living in Jo’burg all my life and still now, and again, I stumble across places and developments that I didn’t know existed in my own backyard. I’ve heard people refer to Johannesburg as the ‘city of gold’ but apparently it’s also known as the ‘inland port’. This is due to its large container complex named City Deep; this inland port is the largest in Africa and fifth-largest in the world.

Like all fast expanding cities across the world, Johannesburg/Gauteng also now faces the logistical challenges of a city that has expanded too fast. Typically, the original logistics centres were developed on the city borders. Over the years, however, these cities grow and absorb the centres, making it difficult to expand or upgrade to accommodate new demands. This is basically what is happening to Johannesburg’s City Deep Terminal, which was established in 1977 as a bonded inland container depot where containers from Durban could clear customs in Johannesburg. City Deep still has a vital role to play but the time has come for some needed expansions.

There are discussions about a proposed new development of a mega-port and logistics gateway 25 km southeast of the Johannesburg CBD. The 630ha site identified for this project will be called Tambo Springs and is located on land originally known as Tamboekiesfontein farm.

The proposed new inland port and logistics gateway will increase Gauteng’s current freight logistics capacity in and out of Johannesburg to nearly double by 2015 and to four million, twenty-foot equivalent units by 2020.

The amount of jobs that will to be created in developing this proposed freight and logistics port will exceed 30 000 jobs. Not only is this a necessary initiative for South African freight forwarding and logistics, but it is also a great tool for improving job creation and unemployment in South Africa.