Artwell Dlamini
3 November 2008
Johannesburg — MUCH has changed on the South African freight scene since the first train carted coal to a terminal in Richards Bay in 1976.
Then the train hauled only 50 wagons carrying 3724 tons of export coal, says Xavier Prevost, senior analyst at Wood Mackenzie. Now, the coal line moves 2,5km-long trains consisting of 200 wagons each to the revamped Richards Bay coal terminal (RBCT).
The coal line, besides several upgrades over years, has nevertheless been starved of sufficient investment for a while.
The huge demand for coal overseas has made matters worse for the strained rail line. In 1996, coal exports stood at about 60-million tons and the figure reached about 66-million tons last year, according to RBCT. Transnet aims to boost coal-line capacity to 81million tons a year.
The 580km rail line stretching from Blackhill in Mpumalanga to Richards Bay in KwaZulu-Natal is prone to accidents, largely due to old rail infrastructure and equipment and ageing rolling stock.
Transnet admits that safetyrelated incidents could be caused by inadequate infrastructure and rolling stock, among other factors.
All this has left Transnet customers grumbling over inefficiencies, poor customer service, unreliability and unpredictability. However, Transnet says it will turn this state of affairs around.
The transport parastatal has started revamping its infrastructure and plans to invest more than R80bn over the next five years. About half of this capital is directed at key corridors, mainly export rail lines that feed ports in Durban, Richards Bay, Saldanha and Cape Town.
For the financial year to 2008 Transnet invested R900m to expand coal and iron-ore lines infrastructure, and ploughed a further R1,5bn into rolling stock.
Recently, Transnet Freight Rail, a division of Transnet, launched a national operations centre. With an integrated asset-tracking system the centre can monitor rolling stock in real time to tell customers about the progress of their consignment.
"This facility is critical as it will assist (Transnet) Freight Rail to achieve the best use of its assets, as it allows for proactive, real-time monitoring and a deviation management system," says Sandile Simelane, of Transnet Freight Rail.
He says the seamless link between the consignment, wagon, and train demonstrates that the transport parastatal takes on-time delivery seriously.
The state-of-the-art centre, unveiled in August, sends out alerts in the event of power failures or suspected cable theft.
"The seating plan in the centre mirrors the 14 business corridors, as well as the regional execution teams headed by their respective regional operating executives."
The corridor teams are responsible for service planning of the integrated train plan, monitoring and deviation management, provision of wagons and locomotives, locomotive distribution, availability of infrastructure and customer care.
"These corridor teams are made up of critical decision-makers to ensure that the plan is executed promptly and efficiently."
Prevost says the centre is not in itself the solution to the export coal industry's problems, although it is likely to be beneficial to the running of the rail line to RBCT.
Johan du Plessis, MD at Logistics International, says the centre has a chance of improving the visibility of the supply chain from the point of loading to terminals, but that it would be waste of money if not operated efficiently.
He says the challenge for Transnet is to make the existing export lines more productive.
Du Plessis says there are bottlenecks on the rail network that could be managed and smoothed out more effectively with the visibility that the new centre will give Transnet Freight Rail.
Bottlenecks make it increasingly difficult for the country to compete with the likes of Australia.
Sean Mooney, vice-chairman of the South African Shippers Council, says: "We can be more competitive if we make sure that logistics infrastructure is in place."
Simelane says that the group has begun to do just that.
Transnet Freight Rail plans to invest R4,91bn in the coal export line, including R2,27bn on locomotives, R1,51bn on wagons and R824m on infrastructure, he says.
The division has already placed an order for 110 electric locomotives dedicated to the coal-line and these will be delivered and placed in operation starting later this year.
"The enhancement of the locomotive fleet is absolutely essential to sustain and increase the volumes being transported on the coal line and to enable us to ramp up capacity to meet anticipated future demand.
"We will not flinch from our mission of delivery, and thus remain committed to sustaining the competitive advantage that the coal line provides to our customers," says Simelane.
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