Empowerment companies get the go-ahead for coal exports through private terminal

Leonard Neill FOUR BLACK empowerment companies have been given the go ahead to export a total of 415 000 tons of coal through the privately owned Richards Bay Coal Terminal during the final months of this year. The four companies are Endulwini Resources headed by Sipho Dube, Imbani Coal which has Briss Mathabathe as its chief executive, Umsobomvu Coal led by Lunguni Kunene and Mmakau Mining, which has as its chief executive Bridgette Radebe, wife of Public Enterprises minister Jeff Radebe. It follows an agreement between a committee consisting of terminal stakeholders which had been deliberating on a proposal that empowerment companies be allowed to export a total of one million tons annually. The amount now approved is for the portion of that figure in relation to the remaining weeks of the year. Transnet, which owns the rail link to the terminal through Spoornet’s Coal Link as well as National Ports Authority, had wanted a capacity of four million tons annually to be made to non-terminal shareholders, with one million tons to be allocated to empowerment companies. With the terminal’s shareholders not prepared to agree to the full figure of four million tons, debates on the issue have absorbed most of this year’s meetings. This has been the main reason for the hold-up in the planned 10 million ton Phase V terminal expansion. The major issue surrounding allocation of capacity to other non-shareholders of the Richards Bay terminal has still to be resolved.