TFR: Cuts freight transit time to Maputo to 90 hours!

[Steve Appleton]

From Business Day, June 13, 2011. http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/C ... ?id=145619

Transnet cuts freight time of Maputo train
Efficiency improves, turnaround time cut from 200 to 90 hours
MARK ALLIX
Published: 2011/06/13 06:53:04 AM

TRANSNET Freight Rail has reduced the turnaround time of trains plying the Maputo development corridor from 200 hours to 90 hours, vastly improving its efficiencies in the face of a national shortage of rolling stock, especially locomotives. The road and rail corridor links mining, industrial and agricultural production centres in SA, Swaziland and Mozambique, terminating in Maputo.

About $225m has been invested in Maputo’s port and the nearby Matola coal and magnetite terminal since 2003, with cargo increasing from 5-million tons to a projected 12,6-million tons.

"Transnet (Freight Rail) has done superb work. There is a massive improvement in efficiency," Dave Rennie, chairman of the Maputo Port Development Company and CEO of South African logistics and shipping company, Grindrod Freight Services, said last week.

Maputo Port Development Company is a Mozambican-registered company that operates the concession to redevelop the Maputo port and Matola terminal. It combines state and private stakeholders, including Dubai-based global port operator DP World, Grindrod, and Mozambique Ports & Railways (CFM). DP World holds the concession to operate the container terminal at the port, while Grindrod owns and operates the nearby Matola coal terminal.

"In Maputo we have capacity for expansion and there is adequate rail infrastructure, although obviously we would like to see more (locomotives)," Mr Rennie said. He said Grindrod’s share of investment in the Maputo and Matola ports was $140m, out of a total $225m. A further capital injection of $250m would be made up to 2016.

The company has completed the upgrading of the Matola terminal’s capacity from 2-million to 6-million tons a year.

Grindrod said its terminal had operated at full capacity since Transnet Freight Rail’s upgrade to rail infrastructure, and the improved turnaround times. "We are really very encouraged by the partnership between Grindrod, CFM and Transnet Freight Rail to bring about immense efficiencies along our corridor," Brenda Horne, CEO of the Maputo Corridor Logistics Initiative, said last week. The initiative co-ordinates hundreds of businesses and their associations, and various multinational agencies.

Grindrod said it planned to expand its Mozambican and South African coal terminals to meet growing demand from miners in the Witbank and Waterberg regions.

Maputo Port Development Company CEO Jorge Ferraz said at a conference in Maputo earlier this month that port volumes were expected to double in the next four years, and grow to about 50- million tons a year by 2030.

The development of the Maputo corridor infrastructure enhances the shipping of African commodities to India, Southeast Asia and China.