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Davao International Container Terminal is offering a discount for plug-in rates of export reefer containers until end of the year
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The P70 per hour discount rate is applied for early gate-in of export reefer containers from Tuesday to Friday, while regular rates apply from Saturday to Monday
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The discounted rate will apply until December 31, 2023
Davao International Container Terminal (DICT) is offering a discount for plug-in rates of export reefer containers until end of the year.
Since September 26, DICT has been offering a discounted plug-in rate of P70 per hour for early gate-in of export reefer containers from Tuesday to Friday. The regular rate of P87.01 per hour, meanwhile, applies for export reefers plugged in at DICT from Saturday to Monday.
The discounted rate will apply until December 31, 2023 and is part of DICT’s commitment to support shipping operations, the company said in a statement.
In March 2023 at the PortCalls Mindanao Shipping Conference, Bonifacio Licayan, first vice president and general manager of DICT, said DICT has experienced declining volumes in the previous years. This decline is primarily attributed to a reduction in reefer throughput due to the impact of climate change and the Fusarium wilt (Panama disease) on the production of bananas, a major commodity in southern Mindanao.
READ: DICT container throughput down 8% in 2022 on low banana output
Licayan noted the climate has been “very unfavorable to bananas” for the last four or five years, while the Panama disease wiped out small banana growers.
Bananas and pineapples accounted for 87% of the total export containers at DICT in 2022. The rest are also agri-based products such as coco products, palm oil, and rubber products, or products related to the production of bananas and pineapples such as scrap paper. For imports, hardware accounted for 52% of the total, followed by other products (22%), packaging materials (18%), coffee (5%), and household goods (4%).
In January 2023, however, Licayan said DICT “surprisingly” saw an increase in volumes. He added, “We hope we’re seeing the light at the end of the tunnel now.”
In January, reefers grew 5% to 13,231 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEU) from 12,566 TEUs, while dry boxes rose 2% to 14,087 TEUs from 13,747 TEUs.
Still, Licayan expressed they do not see volumes hitting pre-pandemic levels of around 400,000 TEUs this year, and they would be “very happy already” if they hit 380,000 TEUs in 2023.
In 2021, DICT finished its expansion project, increasing the annual capacity of the Mindanao gateway to 800,000 TEUs. DICT initiated this expansion in 2019 due to the Panabo, Davao Del Sur terminal operating near full capacity and handling larger vessels since 2013.
