Cowrie Place here in the port of Cape Town is the first integrated maritime Port of Entry Control Centre in South Africa. It has been designed to accommodate in one spot not only customs, excise and immigration, but also health, safety and intelligence.
Cowrie Place is state-of-art maritime border control.
The port of Cape Town is the oldest in South Africa. It used to provide work for Cape Town's largest group of unskilled workers in the heyday of the Castle Line mailships that carried letters and passengers. Then came air travel in the 1970s and containerization in the 1990s. Jobs at the docks declined as cruise liners sailed less frequently and more and more container ships chose to offload in Durban and Richards Bay.
It was the container ships with larger cargoes and fewer seamen that changed the maritime culture of Cape Town.
Still the port of Cape Town docks a substantial number of container and passenger ships.
Last year the port processed 870 851 containers and 729 736 tons of dry bulk. A total of 6 173 commercial vessels and 55 passenger vessels entered and/or left the port and 62 570 people entered and/or departed from Cape Town harbour.
Ports are complex borders to manage. Cowrie Place will provide the space and facilities to manage passengers and cargoes more efficiently than before.
In time E-Berth will be developed into a fully-fledged passenger liner terminal to complement Cowrie Place.
We hope to have the Border Management Agency established by the end of 2016. Before then we will have a lot to learn from Cowrie Place.
