Any buyers for TFR’s rail network?

With up to 7 300-kilometres of the Transnet Freight Rail (TFR) 20 000-km rail network up for grabs, who is going to be the buyer? Transnet has announced that this spare line will be sold to the private sector on a concession basis, but FTW investigation seemed to reveal that there are unlikely to be too many interested parties. Although the parastatal has confirmed the details to the parliamentary portfolio committee for public enterprises, there is still no public clarity about just what, and where, these 7 300-kms are. But, from the fact that Transnet has stated that it has a core of 12 800-km of main line track and 7 300-km of branch lines, it could be assumed that it’s these backwater spurs that will be for sale. Even more so because 3 350-km of these branch lines have already been shut down as uneconomic to run, and unwanted. “There’s always been a lot of specific branch lines for mills, mines, agricultural areas and the like,” said Lawrie Bateman, MD of MSC Logistics, a major SA rail operator. “I suppose farm co-ops, for example, may be interested, but I can’t see this sale coming to much.” He also told FTW that, certainly, no-one had come knocking on MSC’s door and offering them lines of track. There’s a problem for any such purchase to prove itself viable, according to Bateman. It requires an expensive lot of heavyweight equipment, and has only a limited period of use in any time-frame. “Difficult for it to be costefficient,” he said. Another industry commentator who preferred to remain unnamed believes bulk operators could possibly be interested – coal, steel and the like – who already use rail to get bulk cargoes from the mines to their plants. He doesn’t, however, expect that it will apply to the container business. If the Durban-Johannesburg container line came up for sale, that would certainly generate a lot of interest, in his view. But for anything other than the profit-making, dedicated rail lines, there’s unlikely to be a rush of buyers. Minister of public enterprises, Barbara Hogan, has already given her approval in terms of the Public Finance Management Act. And, once ratified by cabinet, the tenders could be issued – something that Chris Wells, acting chief executive of Transnet, expected would be about year-end or early next year.