Mozambique port’s hub hopes dashed

Constant river silting and shifting sandbanks at the Mozambique port of Beira require daily dredging, dashing hopes of building itself into a major Indian Ocean minerals export hub, Reuters reports. Beira has long been used as a transhipment port, processing cargo from landlocked Zimbabwe, Malawi and Zambia, but recently also started moving coal found in Mozambique’s northern Tate province, which links Beira through an old railway, said the report. Infrastructure bottlenecks are a major headache for miners exploiting solid coking coal reserves. Brazil’s Vale was forced to curtail its output and export targets last year and Rio Tinto wrote off US$3 billion on its Mozambican assets, partially because of poor infrastructure. “This is the most difficult channel in this region that requires dredging nearly every day,” Carlos Mesquita, managing director of Cornelder de Mocambique, which handles the port, told Reuters in an interview. Even after a major dredging project was completed in 2011, it was not enough to allow access of a 4 500-TEUer. Only ships drawing 9.5 metres can dock at Beira, though this is expected to change after another dredging operation next year. Most coal from mines set up by Vale and Rio Tinto is sent via the 545 kilometre Sena railway line, which is also being blighted this year. Its upgrade has been delayed and it was recently shut by heavy flooding - and trucks face heavily potholed highways cause by frequent and severe summer rains.