The Performance of Seaport Clusters - RePub - Erasmus Universiteit ...

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The Performance of Seaport Clusters
12.2 Strengths and weaknesses of Durban’s port cluster
Table 80 shows the score of Durban’s port cluster compared to the score Richard’s Bay
(RB) and the average score of the 6 port clusters.
Table 80: Strengths and weaknesses of Durban’s port cluster
Variable D RB Research findings
The level of congestion
-2.1 1.8
Significantly worse than in Richard’s Bay
and other 6 ports
The level of land prices and office rents
-1.3 3.1
Significantly worse than in Richard’s Bay
and other 6 ports
The presence of intermediaries
-0.6 1.7
Significantly worse than in Richard’s Bay
and other 6 ports
The presence of a labor force
The presence of cluster entry barriers
2.2 1.5
(access to local knowledge, networks and
capital)
-0.6 -0.3
The presence of cluster exit barriers
(immobile staff and fixed investments)
0.2 0.0
The quality of collective action regimes
93
2.6 2.3
The presence of knowledge spillovers 2.5 0.9 Significantly better than in Richard’s Bay
The diversity of the cluster population
3.3 0.4
Significantly better than in Richard’s Bay
and other 6 ports
The presence of a culture of trust
3.2 0.8
Significantly better than in Richard’s Bay
and other 6 ports
The presence of customers and suppliers
3.4 1.5
Significantly better than in Richard’s Bay
and other 6 ports
The presence of embedded leader firms
2.8 0.6
Significantly better than in Richard’s Bay
and other 6 ports
The presence of internal competition 1.9 -0.5 Significantly better than in Richard’s Bay
Average scores on a scale from –5 (very bad) to +5 (very good)
* Significantly higher score than in other two regions
** Significantly lower score than in two other regions
The weaknesses of Durban’s port cluster are first the level of congestion, second the level of
land prices and office rents and third the presence of intermediaries.
93 This score is very high compared to the evaluation of the five regimes: compared to Richard’s
Bay the quality is good, but a comparison with the other cases would be misleading.