Southern Ports cements its status as leading regional port at Industry Awards

Southern Ports has been recognised amongst Australia’s top performing ports for the third time in four years.

The regional port authority was highly commended in the Port or Terminal of the Year category at the DCN Australian Shipping and Maritime Industry Awards held yesterday (Thursday 20 November).

Southern Ports Chief Executive Officer Keith Wilks said the recognition showed its ports at Albany, Bunbury and Esperance continued to punch above their collective weight.

“We’ve set some ambitious goals across our three ports and we’re continuing to hit the mark even in the face of some trade challenges,” Mr Wilks said.

“Our teams pivoted and adapted in a successful effort to increase the diversity of our commodity throughput as well as our customer base which has allowed Southern Ports to right the ship and minimise the future impact of industry fluctuations.

“All this was done while continuing to raise the bar as a high performance organisation by continuing to invest in our digital transformation, achieving ISO accreditation across three areas of the organisation and delivering some our biggest projects to date.”

Darwin Port (winner) and Port of Brisbane (highly commended) were the other ports recognised for their achievements in the category.

Southern Ports previously won the category in 2023 following a year of record trade and was also highly commended in 2022, placing it amongst the nation’s top ports in three of the past four years.

“Continued and sustained success for our ports means continued and sustained success for the South West, Great Southern and Goldfields-Esperance regions that we are part of,” Mr Wilks said.

“It means our customers have confidence we can connect them to global opportunities and it means our communities can trust us to create enduring value out of those opportunities we facilitate.”

Southern Ports had also been named a finalist in the Supply Chain Innovation and Technology Award and the Safety Award ahead of the winners being announced at the 20 November awards ceremony.

Keith Wilks’ ongoing contribution to the industry was also recognised by being named a finalist in the Maritime Servies Award, won by Halliday Engineering.

See the full list of winners here.