Over the past 10 years and more there has been a decrease in efficiency in SA’s transport and export logistics, especially at ports and on rail networks. As the volume of freight transported grows, more of this is moving onto roads, contributing to the congestion and deterioration of road infrastructure.
Lack of investment in the upkeep and improvement of ports and railways, coupled with the fact that performance efficiency and productivity has decreased, has meant that there has been no substantial growth in throughput at ports, says Jacob van Rensburg, head of research & development at the industry body, SA Association of Freight Forwarders (SAAFF).
The problem, Van Rensburg said, is not only at the ports but also at access points to the ports. This infrastructure is not designed to accommodate the volumes that the current demand is pointing to. At the Durban container terminal, for example, where much of SA’s citrus gets exported from, there are only two lanes entering and exiting the port — similar sized ports globally will have at least four lanes going to either side to reduce the turnaround for trucks delivering cargo to the port.
“For SA, we’ve been amid an extended period of rail infrastructure challenges. This failure has resulted in a substantial amount of ‘rail-friendly’ cargo being transported on the road, putting additional pressure on the road freight industry and the accompanying infrastructure,” he said.
According to Stats SA’s land transport surveys for the first six months of the year, when comparing the change in rail and road freight transport between 2012 and 2022, the share of rail out of total freight transport has decreased from about 30% to about 18%. The total amount of tonnes transported by rail decreased over this period from 103-million tonnes in 2012 to 84-million tonnes from January to June this year.
“Due to rail inefficiencies we are seeing bulk commodities such as coal and chrome moved by road; this should not be the case, it should be transported by rail,” said Van Rensburg.
Coal miner and exporter Exxaro previously told Business Day that constraints on Transnet Freight Rail (TFR) and at the Richards Bay Coal Terminal has seen the company resort to transporting more coal by road and to other ports where there was capacity but making use of these alternative routes for export can easily cost double as much as transporting the coal with TFR and through Richards Bay.
Transnet CEO Portia Derby said at the Economic Sabotage of Critical Infrastructure Roundtable event in Johannesburg that cable theft that affects the parastatal’s freight rail network eroded earnings from chrome and coal exports by about R30bn over the last year. Over this period about 1,500km of cable was stolen, but as Derby pointed out, whether it is 1m or 60m of cable that gets stolen, the affect on operations is the same as it prevents trains from moving.
The continued push towards increasing rail’s share of volumes has not had any noticeable effect, said SAAFF CEO Juanita Maree.
According to Maree, the private sector has advocated strongly for allowing third-party access to rail. “Sadly, the terms and conditions laid down by Transnet for access to slots remain unattractive, and this impasse will remain unresolved until such time as more reasonable conditions are applied.”
The result, she said, is that private sector operators are unlikely to show interest while the terms remain restrictive and one-sided.
Any restructuring, says SAAFF, must allow open and equitable third-party access to rail, where the rules are well defined, performance and interactions are closely monitored, and realistic time frames are applied. Also, there must be a transparent long-term view to allow any reasonable return on investment. Otherwise, the policy drive will remain fruitless, said Maree.
“As we have consistently reiterated, SA's freight demand is high, and rail must play its part. Therefore, we need to get rail-friendly cargo back onto the rail, as a multimodal logistics system requires the smooth and closely interlinked functioning of all modes involved.”
But there are some signs of improvement. Collaboration between the private and public sector was almost non-existent 10 years ago, now there is frequent interaction between stakeholders, said Van Rensburg.
Private participation in Transnet’s port infrastructure development programme to upgrade Durban Pier 2 and Ngqura Container Terminals, for example, are a welcome move.
“It appears as if the many calls for this to happen have finally been noticed, and we again emphasise that private-sector participation is a necessary evolution required to kick-start our maritime economy.”
Transnet must revolutionise, said Maree, otherwise, SA will continue to lose out to regional competitors, continuing and accelerating the trend seen in the last decade. “Ultimately, the trade and logistics industry — and the SA economy as a whole — cannot afford the ongoing losses to our counterparts to continue.”
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