THERE IS a distinct future for the rail transport of containers, according to Roland Naidoo, director of Rail Road Africa, particularly with the latest Spoornet restructuring sounded out by public enterprises minister Jeff Radebe in his budget speech recently.
The container rail freight operation runs 24 hours a day, he said. With good planning you can come very close to road on delivery time to the final destination.
The other efficiency factor is that rail can move huge volumes of containers at one time, Naidoo added. You can then stagger delivery from the City Deep inland harbour, he said, delivering the containers as the customers require them.
A good working relationship with the Spoornet planning team helps not only this, but even allows for fast delivery of urgent containers, Naidoo added. We find that we can achieve a very good turnaround between Durban harbour and City Deep, he said.
All this has been helped, he added, by operations management upgrades at the terminal . City Deep has been working very well in recent times, said Naidoo. The communication flow between management, the unions and rail freight operators, for example, has improved immensely.
In turn, this has led to rail being able to compete more effectively with road in two other areas. More flexible and more efficient, is how Naidoo describes them.
With this, we are now able to move a number of new commodities - like tea, tobacco, cotton and copper - in containers. We have been able to consolidate these nicely, and put them on rail.
This, Naidoo added, has seen Rail Road Africa looking further afield in the commodities it handles. We are continually seeking new solutions for our customers, he said, and introducing new commodities to rail transport is part of this.
And possible privatisation of rail routes - does this offer any sort of new role for Rail Road Africa?
Looking ahead, said Naidoo, if the opportunity was granted to us to run our own terminal-to-terminal set-up, we'd welcome it with some excitement.
Independent companies like ours - although we don't have the capital backing to compete with the big players - are ideally involved to get into this type of management.
Rail versus road - what is the latest trend?
One trend, said Naidoo, is that we have been growing - while other road transport players have been declining.
My opinion is that rail is starting to pick up some momentum.
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