Spoornet commits R32m to East London

…as grain elevator races back to action Leonard Neill EAST LONDON harbour’s grain elevator is overloaded and Spoornet is rushing refurbished rolling stock to the port to relieve the situation. The rail utility last week announced that it had committed R32.2m to ‘de-mothballing’ rolling stock, all of it targeted for the port. The grain elevator, which stood unused for some years, raced back into action when UN Food Aid Programme officials decided to dispatch shiploads of maize to Zimbabwe. Now vessels are discharging an average of 25 000 tons per shipload every two or three weeks in East London, and from there it is railed to Zimbabwe. But the shortage of rolling stock has seen the elevator filled to capacity, with ships needing to wait for wagons to become available before more space can be opened up for discharging. Vessels normally spend four days in East London offloading. One had to be berthed for 12 days this month because of the delays. Harbour staff, who have been working overtime in the past to assist with offloading, have reverted to normal day shifts. Accepting that the situation is directly related to its stock shortage, Spoornet has decided that the 400 wagons and 18 locomotives now under reconstruction at Transnet business unit Transwerk in Pretoria will be placed in the East London-Zimbabwe service as soon as they are completed. Currently 19 500 tons of maize per week are transported along this route, but Spoornet is satisfied that when the refurbished fleet is back in harness - expected to be within six months - the flow to the north will be doubled. The food aid project is expected to last up to three years, after which the rolling stock will be re-allocated to domestic and deep-sea exports. A Spoornet spokesman told FTW this week: “Don’t think of these wagons coming out as old crates which have been patched up to meet a need. They are sparkling examples of what can be done to older stock. In fact, they look and smell better than brand new ones!” Viamax Logistics, acting as the logistics and supply chain integrator for Spoornet, SA Port Operations, B2B Africa and Freight Dynamics - all Transnet business units - was recently voted joint overall winner of the Logistics Achiever Awards for 2002. This was in recognition of ‘delivering performance well beyond expectation’ on the East London-Bulawayo corridor in the delivery of relief maize to Zimbabwe.