Considerable interest in Transnet’s plans to develop a deepwater port and a rail network to serve the country’s planned hydrogen production hub for the Northern Cape catapulted the relevant story to the top of last week’s traction stats.
The related report (https://tinyurl.com/48wska4k) also received a fair amount of input from interested readers on social media.
Although many said it boded well for the larger Transoranje area, especially considering what was happening north of the border in Namibia where once-abandoned diamond mining south of Lüderitz was being revitalised, some critics said it was coming too late for South Africa.
Some said the logistics utility should rather spend its money and time on fixing the country’s broken ports and railway system, instead of tackling ambitious projects that lagged behind current green energy developments across the globe.
Transnet may say “you’re damned if you do and you’re damned if you don’t.”
People on the ground, subsisting on little more than fishing and farming, probably think it’s the best news to have ever involved South Africa’s remote north-western corner.
Still in the field of power generation, significant interest was also generated by a report published about Eskom’s plans to charge off-the-grid customers for the ‘convenience’ of remaining attached to the grid (https://tinyurl.com/3vud7epp).
If approved, consumers of independently generated electricity would a pay a monthly fee of R938 instead of R218 for being hooked up to Eskom, whether they are using the national grid or not.
Stories that were also popular included a post about the port strike at Felixstowe in the UK (https://tinyurl.com/563r5ka2), the container innovation by new line Carrier53’ launching super-size box freight for Transpacific rotation (https://tinyurl.com/np3m9t9z), the good news that prosecuted looters from last year’s riots in KwaZulu-Natal are heading off to jail (https://tinyurl.com/5n8fnhsd), and the announcement that Durban will be getting a “massive new logistics hub” (https://tinyurl.com/ytpeypkn).