Transnet Freight Rail (TFR) is set to resume rail services on the Matola corridor on the Maputo rail line from April 19 after a train derailed on February 18, causing serious damage to a nearby bridge and closing the line for repairs. As a result of the line closure South African coal producer, Coal of Africa (CoAL), declared force majeure, unable to deliver coal from its Vele Colliery in the Limpopo to the Maputo Coal Terminal until the line was restored. CoAL said on April 11 that in view of TFR’s announcement, it expected to only start shipping coal through the Matola rail corridor to the Maputo port from May. “The company ... anticipates that exports will resume during May 2013 and the force majeure will remain in effect until the rail system has reached its normal operating capacity,” the company said in a Johannesburg Stock Exchange notice. “All of our coal from Vele is earmarked for export,” Sakhile Ndlovu, investor relations manager at CoAL, told FTW at the time of the force majeure declaration. “For us there is no other option but to stockpile our product for export.” She noted that Vele had achieved its stockpile capacity at the time, and had had operations suspended at the mine since then. Vele produced 194 495 tonnes of coal at Vele in the second quarter of its current financial year, constituting about 16.9% of CoAL’s total coal production.
