Exporters call for commission of enquiry into Spoornet

Leonard Neill SPOORNET'S INABILITY to meet railage requirements from inland areas to seaports has placed South Africa's granite production and similar mining enterprises in danger of losing out to other emerging nations. At the same time these companies have been unable to enjoy the advantages of the depreciated rand because of the shortage of rail stock. These factors emerged at a conference held by South Africa's granite producers in Sandton last week, when the industry heads called on Spoornet to 'come clean with the facts about their situation and not allege they have the capacity to meet all bookings made well in advance.' "That simply is not the truth," said Mario Marcenaro, chief executive of Marlin Corporation, who chaired the meeting. "What is needed is a commission of enquiry similar to that investigating prisons at present. We need someone from outside to look into the workings of Spoornet and that should be regarded as a matter of urgency. "Spoornet was serving us all satisfactorily until two years ago but since then their service has deteriorated rapidly. Whatever we book well in advance will not be delivered. We are losing 20-25% of orders because they are not meeting our requirements, even though we, like the rest of our industry, are able to plan 12 months in advance." Marcenaro warned that while the world's granite demands were rising at the rate of 8% per annum, South Africa's exports were falling behind the pace. Countries like China, India and Brazil are making giant steps forward and taking up this market but South Africa is going backwards, he said. "Because of the poor service we have experienced in the past two years we have never really been in a position to exploit the rand. Yes, we can go by road, but that is costly to us and is not in the best interests of the country. Roads suffer with these heavy loads and the costs to repair them escalate. "Yet every time we try to engage Spoornet in negotiations on the matter we get no response. Nobody compensates us for the tonnage we have to send by road and the extra costs incurred." Marcenaro said his company railed 2 000 tons of granite at a time from Rustenburg to Durban in four to five days in the past, but this can now take up to four weeks to reach the port. The meeting voiced to the sheer frustration on the part of the mining industry, said Rob Brown, chief executive of granite producer Kelgran Africa. "We know Spoornet has problems, but they must come forward to us about these and not operate strictly as a monopolistic state organisation. Let them acknowledge their problems and show us they have some positive plan in place to improve the situation." A spokesman for ferrochrome company Xstrata stated that his company had sent less than one percent of product by road to the harbours in 1999. This, however, had jumped to 11% in 2001 and this year almost a quarter of the output will have to be road transported to meet orders. "Spoornet cannot keep on blaming what happened 20 years ago," said Marcenaro. One concern expressed at the meeting was the failure of Spoornet to have any representative in attendance, even though repeated invitations had been sent to them.