Vessel & Rig Agency
Vessel & Rig Agency · South Africa

Vessel & Rig Agent: Port of Cape Town

Multipurpose port focussed on repair, cargo, projects and transit stops

Aerial view of the Port of Cape Town, South Africa with Table Mountain behind: the repair, project-cargo and offshore-support harbour where Afrishore acts as vessel and rig agent
Heavy-lift discharge · Port of Cape Town · Ben Schoeman Dock

Afrishore holds an active port agency licence for the Port of Cape Town, which remains a premier option for transiting vessels, ship-repair, project-cargo and offshore project support.

Agency licence
Own
Local office
Woodstock
Port code
ZACPT
Quality system
ISO 9001

What we handle at Cape Town

  • Port clearance & customs formalities
  • Berth scheduling & port-authority liaison
  • Immigration & crew-change compliance
  • Dry docking & repairs coordination
  • Project & abnormal / heavy-lift cargo
  • Ship husbandry & bunkering
  • Procurement & technical support
  • Off Port Limits (OPL) logistics
  • Mobilisation / demobilisation

Vessel & rig types

Rigs Drillships Semi-submersibles OSVs / PSVs AHTS Tankers FPSOs Cargo ships

Ship repair & dry docking at Cape Town

The Port of Cape Town has two graving docks and a syncrolift shiplift. These are the gating dimensions a vessel owner uses to confirm a vessel will fit before planning a repair call:

Sturrock Dry Dock

Overall docking length
360 m
Width at entrance
45.1 m
Width at coping (beam)
47.5 m
Depth on entrance sill (HWOST)
13.7 m

Robinson Dry Dock

Overall docking length
161.2 m
Width at entrance
20.7 m
Width at coping (beam)
27.4 m
Depth on entrance sill (HWOST)
8.3 m

Syncrolift Shiplift

Overall docking length
80 m
Maximum beam
14 m
Depth over entrance sill
15.9 m
Repair lanes
2 × 70 m1 × 55 m2 × 75 m
The Titan floating dock and offshore support vessels alongside the ship-repair quay at the Port of Cape Town at sunrise – a simultaneous dry docking coordinated by Afrishore
A simultaneous Cape Town dry docking coordinated by Afrishore: the Titan floating dock (Port of Réunion), GH Discovery (United Offshore Support) and Normand Energy (Solstad) at the ship-repair quay.

See the simultaneous docking on LinkedIn

More about Afrishore at Cape Town

Afrishore runs its Cape Town agency from an office in Woodstock, holding its own port agency licence at the Port of Cape Town. From here Afrishore acts as full vessel and rig agent – for rigs, drillships, OSVs, PSVs, AHTS, tankers, FPSOs in transit and cargo ships – giving operators a permanent, accountable local team at one of South Africa's busiest repair, project-cargo and offshore-support ports, with Cape Town International Airport close by for crew and time-critical freight.

Cape Town does not wait, and Afrishore's local team is built around that. Afrishore handles port clearance and port-authority liaison, immigration and crew changes, dry docking and repairs coordination, husbandry, bunkering, project and abnormal cargo and full mobilisation/demobilisation – worked through tight repair-quay and dry-dock windows and complex immigration without dropping the schedule.

Dry docking is where Afrishore's Cape Town team earns its keep. The port's two graving docks and syncrolift shiplift (full dimensions below) take anything from an OSV to a drillship, semi-submersible or the largest tankers and bulk carriers on the coast – but the value is in coordinating the docking. Afrishore has run complex ones here, including the simultaneous docking of the Titan floating dock for the Port of Réunion, GH Discovery for United Offshore Support and Normand Energy for Solstad, holding the port-authority, ship-repair yard, classification-society survey and crew interfaces together around each docking window so every vessel cleared the dock on schedule.

Beyond vessel agency, Afrishore is a Cape Town logistics company and freight forwarder for the offshore and project-cargo sector – sea, air and road freight, customs clearance, bonded warehousing, cross-border transport and technical procurement, all routed through the Port of Cape Town and Cape Town International Airport. Operators and rig owners use the same accountable Afrishore team for agency, logistics and freight forwarding at Cape Town, which removes the hand-off seams that normally cost time on a fast schedule.

That integrated model is what holds Afrishore's Cape Town schedules together – the Dock Titan heavy-lift to Réunion, rig anchorage, PSV and OSV calls, the 2Africa subsea cable-landing staging and the Oceaneering subsea grout-bag export, each run as one job from a single point of accountability.

Vessel & rig agency at other ports

Afrishore agents vessels and rigs at every licensed port in our Southern African network – Cape Town is one of 6:

Beyond agency at Cape Town

Vessel and rig agency is the focus here, but Afrishore runs these from Cape Town too, under the same single point of accountability: