Australia’s freight performance – numbers, assessments, solutions

In our recent article ‘Where’s my box? The case for improved supply chain visibility. Now!’, we mentioned the Federal Government’s Inquiry into National Freight and Supply Chain Priorities. Infrastructure Partnerships Australia has compiled information from all the submissions made to the Inquiry into a report, ‘Fixing Freight: Establishing Freight Performance Australia’.

Just as we outlined in our article on supply chain visibility, IPA, and indeed submissions to the Inquiry, see “… a pressing need to do better on data collection, integration and analysis.” And when you look at the numbers, as IPA does in this report, you can clearly see why the freight and logistics sector is under pressure.

The numbers

In 2015/16, 738 billion tonne kilometres of freight moved across the country – this represents double the freight moved 20 years ago. Of that number in 2015/16:

• 56% moved by rail (primarily bulk freight, a substantial component of which is mining-related)
• 29% by road
• 15% by coastal shipping
• 0.01% by air

In forecasting provided for IPA by BIS Oxford Economics, our national freight task will increase 26% by the year 2030.

On the road

However, even though freight by road comes in a distant second by percentage to rail, it is on Australian roads that we see the growth in freight and traffic congestion hit hard.

It may only represent 29% of the total national freight task, but 75% of non-bulk goods in Australia are moved by road. And 80% of freight moved by road travels less than 100 kilometres.

Drilling a little further into the numbers, long-distance, non-bulk freight moved by road has increased six-fold over the past four decades¹. According the National Transport Commission’s 2016 report Who moves what where: Freight and Passenger Transport in Australia, road freight moving in capital cities accounted for more than 20% of total road freight in Australia during 2011–12.

Download the report

Along with the statistics derived from the Government’s Inquiry into National Freight and Supply Chain Priorities, the IPA’s report also provides assessments of Australia’s freight and logistics strategies, and proposed solutions. Click the button below to download a copy of the report.