ANOTHER ROUND of increases to Terminal Access Charges (TACs) takes effect from 1 January 2026, reinforcing a pricing model that has become entrenched across Australia’s major container ports. Empty Container Park (ECP) notification fees - while not aligned to a single annual increase date - have also continued to escalate, adding further cost pressure to the landside task.
For transport operators, importers, and exporters, this is no longer a temporary disruption or a post-pandemic hangover. It is the product of a charging structure that has drifted well beyond normal market discipline and now operates largely unchecked.
This year, those increases arrive alongside something the industry has long demanded: clear, regulator-backed confirmation that the market underpinning landside charges is not working.
The ACCC’s recently released Container Stevedoring Monitoring Report 2024–25 does not simply catalogue rising prices. It concludes that the structure enabling those increases reflects a likely market failure - a finding that carries significant policy weight.
The numbers are stark. In 2024–25, stevedore operating profits reached $808.6 million, representing a 130.5 per cent increase over five years, with operating margins climbing to a record 34.8 per cent. These outcomes were not driven by rising costs, congestion, or productivity improvements. The ACCC found unit costs broadly stable, productivity largely unchanged, and terminals operating with significant spare capacity.
In a workably competitive market, such conditions would restrain prices. Instead, prices have continued to rise - not because demand is overwhelming supply, but because stevedores are no longer relying on commercial negotiations with their actual customers.
Revenue collected from shipping lines - the stevedores’ commercial customers - fell by 0.4 per cent in 2024–25. At the same time, landside and other revenue per lift increased by 12.2 per cent, continuing a trend evident across successive ACCC reports. Rather than charging shipping lines in line with market dynamics, stevedores have increasingly relied on fixed landside charges imposed on transport operators, with those costs inevitably passed downstream to cargo owners.
The scale of this shift is unambiguous. Since 2017–18, container stevedores have collected $3.19 billion in terminal access charges, compared with $1.25 billion in total capital investment over the same period. Landside charges alone have therefore generated around two-and-a-half times the industry’s total investment outlay - a ratio that strongly undermines claims that these fees are primarily about cost recovery.
In 2024–25, landside and “other” revenue accounted for almost half of total stevedore revenue, totalling approximately $1.15 billion, with more than $640 million derived from terminal access charges alone. At major east coast ports, TACs now sit between $194 and $225 per container, levels increasingly disconnected from service outcomes.
The ACCC also benchmarked stevedore profitability against other Australian industrial and transport businesses, finding the sector materially outperforming both groups across operating margins and returns on capital. This is not a sector merely keeping pace with the broader economy - it is outperforming it by a wide margin, despite stable costs, flat productivity, and excess capacity.
While terminal access charges remain the dominant cost driver, ECP notification fees exhibit the same structural defect. ECPs contract with shipping lines for storage and repositioning services, yet increasingly recover revenue through fixed notification and handling fees levied on transport operators. Once again, costs are imposed on parties with no meaningful ability to negotiate or avoid them.
This is not to deny cost pressures elsewhere in the supply chain. In most other cases, however, charges are levied on the commercial customer under contractual arrangements that allow negotiation, comparison, and competitive choice. Landside charges are different - and that distinction goes directly to the ACCC’s market-failure finding.
If terminals and container parks charged shipping lines - their actual customers - those costs would be reflected in freight rates, restoring competitive tension and transparency. Instead, the current structure resembles a ransom model: charges embedded deep in the supply chain, insulated from competition, and borne by those with no practical choice.
At this point, reform is no longer optional. The National Transport Commission and the Department of Infrastructure are examining Productivity Commission and ACCC recommendations, including whether a mandatory code governing stevedore charges - and, where appropriate, ECP notification fees - is required. That work must now translate into action.
The regulator has identified the problem. The evidence is overwhelming. Government intervention is now justified - and necessary. Policy must catch up, and fast.
Without reform, landside charges will continue to rise unchecked, profits will remain divorced from performance, and the cost burden will keep flowing downstream to those least able to absorb it. The ACCC has done its job. It is now up to government to do the same.