Botswana-SA coal link set for 2020 completion

Transnet Freight Rail plans to complete a Botswana coal link by 2020 as part of the coal line expansion from the Waterberg to Richards Bay, TFR CEO Siyabonga Gama said at the 12th Coaltrans conference in Sun City last week. The Waterberg is a coal field in the north west of the country, which expands across the border to Botswana where the coal fields are known as Mmamabula. Gama said TFR would link Botswana with the Waterberg within seven years. The line is to run from the Mmamabula coalfields in Botswana across the border to the Waterberg’s Lephalale. It will then pass through Thabazimbi to the coalfields in Mpumalanga, through to the east coast to the Richards Bay Coal Terminal in KwaZulu Natal. “Part of what we would want to do is to unlock the northern mineral belt,” Gama said during his presentation. Ernst Venter, executive general manager for business development at Exxaro, previously told FTW that Transnet’s involvement in the development of infrastructure in the Waterberg would be key to unlocking the development of coal mines in the area. “If there are no sensible rail links, links that can handle volumes, to Eskom’s power stations and to the coast, the vast volumes of coal we can potentially extract in the Waterberg will remain underexploited,” Venter said. Most of Eskom’s power stations are built close to the old coal mines, most of them in Mpumalanga, where many of the mines are approaching the end of their lives. Waterberg is for now not linked by rail to these power stations, which would make the transport of vast volumes of coal to existing power stations complicated and expensive indeed, if most of it has to happen via road. Others agreed. “We need the rail link, and therefore TFR’s plans to put in this Botswana link is good news for the Waterberg,” an unnamed official at another coal producer told FTW. He declined to be named. However, the coal producers FTW spoke to all said that they would like to see physical work happening on the ground before they start “getting excited”, as one producer put it. “There’s a lot of talk from Transnet with its nationwide development plan, but talk is cheap,” said the unnamed official. “The fact remains that the rail development through Waterberg is nationally urgent. I don’t know if everyone understands how urgent rail is over there, in order to keep the cogs [of the country] turning over. I hope TFR understands how urgent it is and that this will very soon become reality.” Limited railing of coal from Botswana to Durban has begun, said Bidvest. However, South Africa’s coal export hub is Richards Bay Coal Terminal, which has the capacity to handle 91 million tpy of coal.Last year it exported 68.3 million tonnes of coal. TFR plans to have the rail capacity of 95 million tpy by 2018 to Richards Bay. It will open up coal rail capacity in South Africa by diverting noncoal traffic on the Swazi link, an upgrade of this link set to form part of Transnet’s R300- billion investment plan. TFR wants to rail more than 32 million tpy of coal by 2019 to Eskom power stations. However, Waterberg miners are set to produce around 60 million tpy of coal by 2030. In total, Transnet moves close to 100 million tpy of coal through Richards Bay and Matola in Mozambique.