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.