TFR still playing catch-up for coal exports

Rail is one of the primary focuses of Transnet’s five-year investment plans, in which R110.5 billion is intended to be spent on rail, ports and pipelines projects by 2016, according to the parastatal transport operation’s new CEO, Brian Molefe. He told a Durban meeting with the business community last week that this overall investment was geared to improve the performance of SA’s logistical system. Particular attention, he added, would be given to backlogs in rail – with R63.7 bn targeted at growth and maintenance projects within Transnet Freight Rail (TFR). Of this, R16.4-bn is to be directed toward the coal export channel from Ermelo to Richards Bay, which coal miners have accused of underperformance and acting as a brake on their export potential. Iain McIntosh, trade and marketing director of Mitsui OSK Line (MOL), said that SA steam coal exports, unfortunately, suffered from this weak link in the landside leg of the supply chain from the inland mines to the coast. Though McIntosh described the main export gateway of the Richards Bay Coal Terminal (RBCT) as a very efficient player, it is not being allowed to be the star it could be. In spite of the global seaborne coal trade increasing 33% between 2005 and 2010, SA exports have just not kept pace with this growth. Indeed, McIntosh added, it has in fact registered a net decline of 7-million tons per annum (mtpa) since 2005 – in spite of RBCT design capacity moving from 76-mtpa in 2009 to 91-mtpa in early 2010 with its phase V completion. “Much of this failure to deliver greater export throughput,” he said, “is due to the TFR coal line which has seen declining performance in recent years.” It showed a marginal improvement in 2010. But, although it guaranteed to rail 65mtpa (with an “aspiration” to reach 68mtpa) in 2010, it achieved only a slightly better railed tonnage at 62.86mt, compared to its 61mt in 2009, according to Raymond Chirwa, CEO of RBCT. At the same time its medium-term aim of reaching 81-mtpa is unlikely before 2013-2014, according to McIntosh – “so there is still some way to go”.