Friday, December 12, 2025
The 145 page report provides extensive detail highlighting significant concerns regarding market failures in the container freight supply chain.
In launching the 2024–25 Container Stevedoring Monitoring Report, the ACCC did not mince words about the state of the market, stating in its accompanying media release that 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, using total real revenue per container lift, show that total real revenue per lift increased by $21.93 (5.5%) in 2024–25, and by $68.88 (19.4%) since 2019–20, reaching a record $423.11 per container.
The ACCC highlights that the stevedoring industry's EBITDA margin of 34.8% now sits well above comparable benchmarks. When assessed against other transportation and industrial sectors, stevedoring profitability in 2024 exceeded the transportation sector across all ACCC metrics, and surpassed the industrials sector across most measures.
Notably, these outcomes have been achieved despite the ACCC finding that stevedores continue to operate with significant spare capacity, stable costs, and largely stable productivity.ACCC Commissioner Anna Brakey observes that "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 entry of Hutchison, a time when the industry was operating as a capacity constrained duopoly, raises serious concern about how this market is operating."
A defining structural shift identified in the report is the growing reliance on landside charges. In 2024–25, 49.5% of total stevedoring revenue — approximately $1.15 billion — was derived from landside charges, compared with just 17% in 2016–17, when 83% of revenue came from quayside charges levied on shipping lines.
That $1.15 billion in landside revenue is almost equivalent to the stevedoring industry's total capital investment over the past eight years ($1.25 billion).
Of that landside revenue, more than $642 million was generated from terminal access charges alone — charges previously described by stevedores as infrastructure levies.
Alarmingly, the ACCC further reveals that since 2017–18, stevedores have collected $3.19 billion in terminal access charges, representing 2.5 times the industry's aggregate investment over the same period.
Against this backdrop, the ACCC states it is "concerned that stevedores can increase these (landside) charges, and thereby their profitability, independent of the underlying market conditions."
The report concludes with a clear warning that "targeted reform is likely needed to ensure there are effective competitive constraints on stevedores to support the supply chain. Without it, Australian businesses and households will ultimately pay the price through higher costs."