Fortnightly service is running at full capacity
AFTER ITS first six months of managing the fortnightly train service between SA and East Africa, Trans Africa Logistics is now close to achieving traffic volumes for a second train, according to director Andre Fourie.
The mid-May was fully-booked to its 56-container capacity, he told FTW. By the middle of this year, if the train full sign stays up, then we'd be able to consider a second.
The service - physically run by Spoornet and Tanzanian rail operators Trans Africa Rail Corporation (TARC), which also has Spoornet amongst its major shareholders - hauls goods between Johannesburg and Kampala, Uganda, via the Tanzanian transfer terminal of Kidatu.
But, while Jo'burg-Kampala in 21 days had a nice ring to it - No, we're not adding Cape-to-Cairo to our thinking, said Fourie. The bulk of the traffic on the 12 trains up to now has mostly been destined for Tanzania. And most of that to the mining developments in that country, he added.
And that's likely to continue, with Fourie pointing to major developments in diamond, gold and nickel mining projects amongst others. The geological situation there is very promising, he said.
But he expects the Kampala leg - which sees a change of rail gauge at the Kidatu inter-change, and a cross-lake ferry run to get there - to be a steady, if conservative, grower.
Just like the whole service, said Fourie, it takes time for people to build up confidence. But a lot of people are now looking at turning their initial interest into actually trying out the new route.
That second train is getting very close, is how Fourie sees it.
¥ As a P.S. to this story, there is still that element of bureau-
cratic interference along the rail route. Fourie told FTW that we could physically run the route in 11-12 days. But slow, and sometimes disruptive, customs procedures along the way are slowing this down to the
21-day transit timing being offered by the operators on the Jo'burg-Kampala run.
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