The delay sets full capacity back to early April, seven weeks from when the collapse of a dedicated stockyard reclaiming machine (RL1) drastically reduced capacity on February 15.

Since the incident, a contract for the removal of the damaged machine has been

awarded and work has commenced. This work is expected to be completed by the end

of March.

Stockyard stacker machine (ST1) was previously reintroduced into service last week

following an inspection.

Inspection work has progressed on Conveyor R2 and Stacker/Reclaimer 1 (SR1)

in parallel with inspections on Stacker/Reclaimer 2 (SR2). Prime Infrastructure has been advised that SR2 would then be reintroduced into service by the end of March, which will increase terminal capacity to approximately 72% of nominal capacity at that time.

The company expected that SR1 would then follow shortly thereafter in early April, at

which time terminal capacity is expected to be approximately 95% of nominal

capacity.

“Due to favourable shipping arrivals and the cooperation of DBCT’s customers and the

Terminal Operator, actual loadings continue to exceed our expectations based on

earlier forecasts,” said Prime Infrastructure.

The company said the number of vessels in the DBCT shipping queue has been declining over the last two weeks. For the week ending 13 March 2004, there were 10 vessels in the queue.