THE NAMIBIAN rail network is busy developing its container movement facilities in expectation of growing transit traffic through Namibia to neighbouring states, according to Jack Dempsey, senior manager with the TransNamib railway corporation.
Part of this relates to anticipated growth in currently-static container volumes through the port of Walvis Bay - which Dempsey likes to describe as the west coast gateway to Africa.
The deepening of the port is due for completion in July, he told FTW. This should attract more traffic through the port, destined for distribution throughout Namibia, and into the neighbouring states.
At the railways, we are gearing ourselves to providing facilities at the railheads for traffic into southern Angola, Zambia, Botswana and Zimbabwe.
TransNamib is currently putting up new container transhipment facilities at the Gobabis railhead - this aimed at traffic for Botswana and Gauteng.
We are also installing new gantry cranes at the container handling facility at Grootfontein, said Dempsey. This on the route to Zambia.
There is also the development of a new container handling facility at Tsumeb - which is TransNamib's railhead for goods for the southern part of Angola.
There is growing activity here, said Dempsey, with truckers coming into Tsumeb - where their containers are destuffed, and then packed into Angola-bound rail containers.
We also have traffic through our network relationship with Spoornet - transhipped to Angola through Tsumeb. Indeed, we expect Tsumeb to develop as the Angola feeder.
Apart from Spoornet CX containers coming to Windhoek for distribution throughout the country by TransNamib, the railway operators also have their own road/rail network feeding cargo out of SA into Namibia.
For this, said Dempsey, we use Spoornet's container handling facility at Upington.
Our road depots in Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban run a daily service (overnight) to Upington, where containers are transhipped to rail for onward distribution through our national network.
Transnamib also has plans on its drawing board for a dry port in Windhoek.
One new development which we are looking at, said Dempsey, is generating more container traffic on the 420 kilometre Walvis Bay-to-Windhoek rail link.
Currently, Windhoek clients use containers from the pool at Walvis Bay harbour. But what we want to see is a full-scale container turnaround centre in the capital city - with all the associated services like cleaning and storage.
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