Richards Bay Coal Terminal (RBCT) is forecasting coal export volumes of 57-million metric tons this year, 2-million more than it anticipated in January. This as Transnet’s Freight Operating Company improves the performance of the coal corridor.
The rail operator is tackling crime by deploying technology, while also addressing the shortage of locomotives and poor signalling on the rail tracks, after years of underperformance.
“We finished our calendar year at 52-million tons. We had a budget this year of 55-million tons, slightly down on Transnet’s budget, which goes to March. We are certainly hoping to get to 56/57-million tons,” RBCT CEO Alan Waller told the coal & energy transition day event in Johannesburg this week.
He said the RBCT undertook an infrastructure assessment last week to scan the whole north corridor and branch lines to help plan for critical maintenance. They found that security was still a major challenge but contracted security companies had come to the party with devices to detect tampering with overhead lines.
“We are hoping to get greater protection of the line in critical areas where, if we have an incident, it hurts us.”
Ian Bird, senior executive for the transport and logistics focal area at Business Unity South Africa, said Transnet’s overall performance was still below the target set in its turnaround plan of moving 170m tonnes of freight by 2025. “There remains a gap. What we are seeing is the performance is incremental ... it is incremental in terms of what the system is capable of and more importantly what the economy requires,” he said.
In terms of coal exports, they were projecting between 58MT and 60MT.
Bird said the new management at Transnet, appointed in 2024, had contributed to the improvement.
“There has been a degree of transparency in the last 18 months in terms of operations, challenges, in terms of willingness to work together between the coal export parties, Transnet, and the national logistics crisis committee out of the Presidency.”
However, more needs to be done to tackle derailments, crime, and locomotive breakdowns, he said.
Transnet Freight Rail CEO Russell Baatjies said it took time to build rail capacity and repair locomotives. “I announced last year the first of the locos will come out in August this year — that is exactly 12 months later. You need to establish supply chains and get these locos back into service,” he said.
In the last three months, four power station managers have been suspended for seven days for not bringing back the units they said they’d bring back on time
— Silas Zimu, special adviser to the minister of electricity and energy
Due to an impasse with the Chinese locomotive supplier, the company had to repair the locomotives in-house, he said. “We had to change our plan in terms of the new locos we were building through Transnet engineering and deployed 23 E-locos on the coal line. Our plan is to deploy 90 E-locos; we have 45 of them there.”
Security is a major issue, he added. “We went into collaboration with Richards Bay Coal Terminal, and we changed service providers; you can see the results.”
Meanwhile, Eskom briefly suspended four general managers at troubled coal-fired plants that had experienced serious breakdowns over the last few months.
“In the last three months, four power station managers have been suspended for seven days for not bringing back the units they said they’d bring back on time,” said Silas Zimu, special adviser to the minister of electricity and energy.
“We are starting to say, ‘let them pay for it’, because we cannot say to God: ‘Bring the sun at a time we want, remove the clouds, don’t take the wind.’ He does not have a cellphone. But the GMs at power stations have cellphones. It is starting to bite on people. I’m saying, these things are realistic, at some stage we’re going to dismiss them, and then it’s going to be bad.”
Mike Teke, CEO of coal miner Seriti Resources, said the group had invested in renewables, despite criticism it was greenwashing.
“I don’t spend time in noise and politics; I’m am a pragmatic person. As a business, we’re saying, the interest of [Africa] to survive, and be big and strong, and compete globally, we need a strong energy base as a continent,” he said.
“Let us start in our country, strengthen our energy mix, and that is why we have invested in Seriti Green, so there are huge opportunities in energy for us.”
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