A presentation by Joubert van Eeden MBA, MSc Eng., B. Eng., Senior Lecturer at Industrial Engineering, Stellenbosch University, South Africa.

Various port container forecasting models are used worldwide. Most of the current models are based on macroeconomic parameters, and tend to overstate capacity requirements. Obtaining the infrastructure investment too early can be costly to the SA economy, but the alternative of investing too late has been felt with the pain of Eskom’s load shedding. The timing for port infrastructure planning is thus crucial. One way to improve forecast accuracy is to understand the container content, and then forecast the content and “re-pack” the content into containers. This session is about understanding parameters for predicting container content.