AUSTRALIA | Record-high stevedoring prices have filtered through Australia's ports, despite significant spare capacity and relatively stable costs.
Australia’s stevedores are charging record-high prices and making historic profits despite having significant spare capacity in ports, and with their costs and productivity remaining relatively stable in recent years, the ACCC’s Container Stevedoring Monitoring Report 2024-25 shows.
In 2024-25, stevedoring profits rose for the fifth year in a row, reaching historical highs across most metrics measured by the ACCC.
Stevedores are now 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 that 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.
The ACCC uses total real revenue per container lift as a proxy for the total stevedoring price paid per container. The stevedoring industry’s total real revenue per lift has increased by AUD 21.93 (or 5.5 percent) in 2024-25 and AUD 68.88 (or 19.4 percent) since 2019-20, to a historical high of AUD 423.11 per container in 2024-25.
Over the past five years, using real earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) as an example, the stevedoring industry’s real:
- operating profit has increased by AUD 457.8 million (or 130.5 percent), to a historical high of AUD 808.6 million in 2024-25
- operating profit margin has increased by 14.5 percentage points, to a historical high of 34.8 percent in 2024-25
- return on average tangible assets has increased by 29.5 percentage points, to a historical high of 45 percent in 2024-25.
The report also compares the profitability of the stevedoring industry with other companies in the transportation and industrials sectors. It shows 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.
“These are very high short run returns for an industry with significant spare capacity at ports, stable costs and stable productivity,” ACCC Commissioner Anna Brakey said.
“Typically, we would expect to see excess terminal capacity placing downward pressure on the stevedores’ prices and short-run profits. The fact that stevedores are performing better than they were prior to the entry of Hutchison, a time when the industry was operating as a capacity-constrained duopoly, raises serious concern about how this market is operating.”
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