Durban Car Terminal Goes Digital

The digital conversion of over 60% of the Durban Car Terminal’s parking bays has been concluded, improving the movement of both import and export cars in a yard that parks over 12 500 at a time. This is the first of two implementation phases.

A total of 7 561 parking bays have been fitted with high-tech bar-coded labels which can be scanned using handheld devices. The scanning of the unique numbers on each of the labels is then uploaded onto the company’s operating system that can locate any car at the terminal yard in real-time.

Terminal Manager Prince Manganyi said, “We are now adopting a system that will do away with delays and reduce short shipments which result from the extended time taken to locate the units in the stack. This has been a manual process until now and managing the yard will be on a whole new level”. He added that the Durban Car Terminal had invested about R500 000 over the last ten months to see the project through. “We relied on the skills and talents of internal resources for system development, configuration, testing, resource training and it saved us a lot of money, yet the quality of workmanship is superior,” said Manganyi.

The terminal will conclude the second implementation phase before the end of the 2023/2024 financial year. The improvement is anticipated to increase the number of units handled per hour – a key performance indicator for measuring efficiency at the terminal.