AUSTRALIA's competition watchdog has called for “targeted reform” of the waterfront, reporting the nation’s stevedores were charging record high prices and making historic profits.
This was a key finding of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s Container Stevedoring Monitoring Report for 2024-25.
According to the regulator, stevedoring profits rose for the fifth year in a row, with stevedores reportedly charging a higher total price per container, in real terms, than at any time since the ACCC began monitoring the container stevedoring industry 27 years ago.
The report concludes a government policy or regulatory response “is likely required to address apparent market failures and improve Australia’s container freight supply chain to the benefit of households and businesses”.
According to the ACCC, the stevedoring industry’s total real revenue per lift has increased by $21.93 (or 5.5 per cent) in 2024-25 and $68.88 (or 19.4 per cent) since 2019-20, to a historical high of $423.11 per container.
During the past five years, the stevedoring industry’s was reported as recording:
The report also compares the profitability of the stevedoring industry with other companies in the transportation and industrials sectors, showing the stevedoring industry's profitability in 2024 was “higher than the transportation sector across all metrics the ACCC used, and higher than the industrials sector across most metrics”.
ACCC commissioner Anna Brakey said these were “very high short run returns for an industry with significant spare capacity at ports, stable costs and stable productivity".
“Typically, we would expect to see excess terminal capacity placing downward pressure on the stevedores’ prices and short run profits,” Ms Brakey said.
“The fact that stevedores are performing better than they were prior to entry of Hutchison, a time when the industry was operating as a capacity constrained duopoly, raises serious concern about how this market is operating.”
According to the ACCC, stevedores have in recent years significantly increased landside charges.
“Over the years, landside charges have gone from a relatively small part of revenue to a major driver of profit for the industry,” Ms Brakey said.
In 2024-25, the ACCC reported the stevedoring industry collected almost half (49.5 per cent or $1.15 billion) of its revenue from landside charges. This was, according to the ACCC, almost equal to the entire investment that the stevedores had made collectively during the past eight years ($1.25 billion).
More than $642 million of the $1.15 billion in landside charges revenue came from terminal access charges alone.
“The stevedoring industry began to significantly increase terminal access charges in 2017 and since then they’ve collected over $3 billion in terminal access charges,” Ms Brakey said.
“We are concerned that stevedores can increase these charges, and thereby their profitability, independent of the underlying market conditions.
“These unavoidable costs land first on trucking companies, who then pass them on to importers and exporters, who have no real way to avoid or negotiate them.
Ms Brakey said with similar charges across terminals and a lack of ability or incentives for most importers and exporters, such costs could not be influenced via competition.
“Targeted reform is likely needed to ensure there are effective competitive constraints on stevedores to support the supply chain,” she said.
“Without it, Australian businesses and households will ultimately pay the price through higher costs.”