The Port of Durban, the fourth-largest container terminal in the southern hemisphere, which handles as much as 31.4-million tonnes of cargo a year has received a R3.4bn infrastructure boost at its adjacent Bayhead multi-modal rail terminal.
The Newlyn PX Terminal, situated in Bayhead next to Transnet's flagship port consists of 640,000m2 of warehousing, rail sidings and open storage. The facility is capable of receiving seven full block trains of 100 20-foot equivalent units (TEUs), a measure of trade volumes at container ports, daily.
Bayhead Road links the port’s operations to the rest of the country. The route handles 13,000 heavy vehicles a day.
The completion of the rail terminal project is part of president Cyril Ramaphosa's initial R1.2-trillion investment drive from the private sector.
The public-private collaboration between the logistics company and state-owned logistics owner, Transnet, is also part of efforts to turn the container terminal around and comes nearly three years after Ramaphosa’s administration announced it would allow private sector participation at the port, which has been hampered by inefficiencies, ageing infrastructure and congestion.
Transnet, the state-owned operator of rail, ports and pipelines, has been struggling to provide adequate port services after years of mismanagement, underinvestment and corruption.
“The [Newlyn PX] terminal will facilitate the movement of sea, rail and road cargo through the Port of Durban via a multimodal hub providing for the handling, storage, loading and movement of a variety of cargo type,” Ramaphosa said on Thursday during the opening of the terminal.
“This includes hard and soft commodities in bulk and break-bulk, containerised cargo and project cargo.”
He added the terminal has been built on land leased from Transnet and the partnership “will assist in improving operational efficiency across the board.”
“In order for this rail terminal project to deliver full benefits to SA for the purpose that it was designed, it has to have trains and slots to be made available to clients. This will lead to a significant increase in revenue for Transnet on the Natcor Corridor through the migration of cargo from road to rail.”
Newlyn CEO, Raj Balmakhun said the terminal will alleviate congestion between congestion of freight trucks between Johannesburg and Durban.
“Throughout history, whenever there has been an evolution there has been job losses, but they will obviously absorb with other opportunities that may exist within the economy. " Balmakhun said.
He added that 4,100 jobs were created during construction and over a thousand full-time jobs exist on site.
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