Coal fires up East London port

Exports of coal through the Port of
East London are already opening
up opportunities for businesses in
the Buffalo City region before the
first container loads of coal from the
Elitheni colliery inland ship out.
“This is exciting. We haven’t seen
this much investment in the East
London Terminal for a while,” says
Khetho Nyawose, terminal manager
for the East London multi-purpose
terminals.
The biggest challenge facing the
terminal has been the lack of shorebased
gantries.
This will change in November when
the first of two mobile harbour cranes
is taken into service.
The Liebherr 550s will be used
almost immediately to load the first
vessel with 30-35 000 tons of coal
using skiptainers and two rotating
spreaders for the first time in South
Africa.
A total of 1 500 skiptainers are
being supplied by Uitenhage-based
Transnet subsidiary TRE. Each opentopped
container can hold 27 tons of
coal, and they will be stacked threehigh
in 500 dedicated slots in the port
ahead of the arrival of the vessels,
according to Nyawose.
The coal will be loaded into
the skiptainers and trucked from
the Elitheni coal mine at Indwe in
central Eastern Cape to Berry Park, a
Transnet Freight Rail handling facility
in Queenstown, where the skiptainers
will be loaded onto the rail wagons
and railed into the port.
According to Nyawose, the system
being used has allayed concerns by
Mercedes-Benz South Africa, which
has a plant overlooking the port,
and was concerned about coal dust
impregnating paint and components.