Australia: New South Wales state Treasurer and Minister for Ports and Waterways Eric Roozendaal has announced the next step in the groundbreaking Port Botany Landside Improvement Strategy (PBLIS).
New regulations, due to come into force later this year, will improve efficiency and ease landside freight delays at Sydney's Port Botany container terminals.
"In response to industry concerns raised this week about stevedore performance at Port Botany, I fully understand the urgency of implementing PBLIS and today I signed off on the new PBLIS regulations," Mr Roozendaal said.
"The new regulations will take effect after passing through Government protocols in the next few weeks.
"The main purpose of the regulations is to ensure fairness and equity between the stevedores and the truck carriers."
The new regulations will be implemented over coming months – with the first step being to secure vital landside performance data from the stevedores and setting the rail access price to the stevedore terminals.
Obtaining the stevedore data will be a key step to a new agreement between stevedores and road transport operators.
Once fully rolled out, expected to happen early in 2011, stevedores who fail to meet performance benchmarks set by Sydney Ports will be forced to compensate truck drivers caught in delays.
The regulations are part of the overall NSW Government-led Port Botany Landside Improvement Strategy (PBLIS) – which aims to drive better landside efficiency, consistency and transparency across the supply chain.
"The introduction of regulations follows extensive consultation with all our industry stakeholders," Mr Roozendaal said.
"We believe the regulations underpin our reform objectives that all users across the port supply chain get a fair go and ensure we can meet the challenges of managing increased container growth over the next 20 years."