Sea Swift operations co-ordinator Damone Everall and executive chairman Chris Pearce show off some of the spare engines the sea freight operator needs to keep on hand to ensure continuity of service for Cape York and the Torres Strait. Photo: Cape York Weekly.
The boss of the region’s key sea freight operator says he “absolutely” understands the frustration of customers regarding costs and shipping delays, and wants to see government intervention to provide hip pocket relief to Cape York and Torres Strait residents and business operators.
Sea Swift executive chairman Chris Pearce invited the Cape York Weekly for a tour of the company’s Cairns operation on 14 May to provide a behind-the-scenes look at the logistics of delivering freight to the remotest part of Queensland, and address criticism about its ownership framework and skyrocketing costs.
The company is 100 per cent owned by the Queensland Government Insurance Fund, but Mr Pearce said he did not agree with the suggestion dividends paid to the Queensland Investment Corporation (QIC), which manages the investment, was impacting Sea Swift’s service delivery.
“QIC invested heavily in Sea Swift on behalf of the superannuation funds, so it’s dividends do not impact on our ability to run this business,” he said.
“The reality is, with this business, every one of those ships costs a lot of money.”
Mr Pearce said one of the biggest challenges for the company was the unpredictability of some freight volumes, and the high cost of replacing plant and equipment battered by salt spray.
As an example, he estimated the trucks Sea Swift uses to refuel sites across Cape York and the Torres Strait have a useable life of “about 15-18 months” due to rusting caused by seawater, while the same vehicle would last about a decade in normal operating conditions.
In response to claims made earlier this month the company refused a Weipa-based business an account because it only used sea freight during the wet season, Mr Pearce said he did not believe it to be the case and said the issue would be investigated.
“We don’t knock people back,” he said.
“We understand some people use road [freight] during the dry period, and then come to us in the wet period, when we try to accommodate everything.
“Generally, we’ve got enough capacity to do that; the only times that things will fail is if we have an issue, like we were talking about before with the Newcastle Bay [crane malfunction].”
The Sea Swift boss praised his team and implored the public not to take their frustrations with the company out on the individuals on the ground.
“We’ve got a lot of people that work in this business that do some amazing things every day,” he said.
“We sail 365 days of the year, right through Christmas, Easter, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, and we sail because we understand the critical nature of what we do.
“From time to time, we have issues, we’re slow; sadly, at times, some of our crew get abused by the general public – that’s really difficult to take, because they are good people.”
On the question of providing an offset to the high cost of sea freighting products to Cape York and the Torres Strait, Mr Pearce said he believed the government – whether state, federal or both – had a responsibility to ensure where people called home did not cause additional cost of living pressure.
“There’s no secret that I’ve been advocating for that for a while,” he said when asked about how vital freight relief was for the region.
“Some of our islands [we deliver to] have 89 people, right? And you’ve got hours of steaming time to get to the island, you’ve got hours at the island, and then you’ve got hours steaming off, and you’re delivering to 89 people.
“It’s just common sense that it would be expensive, and I believe that there should be some assistance from either a state or a federal level.
“I think it’s absolutely appropriate.”
