New investments in coal logistics have been announced in the past few weeks, raising hopes that the bottleneck in Southern Africa's transport infrastructure which is strangling coal exports is beginning to ease. For the cause of the bottleneck, most fingers point at the slow rate of investment by Transnet Freight Rail in rolling stock and rail expansion in SA. In nearby Mozambique, the private sector needs time to survey and cost new rail routes for greenfields coal projects in the interior.December's statistics from the Richards Bay Coal Terminal (RBCT), SA's main coal port, showed that Transnet had substantially increased the number of trains and volume of coal delivered to the port.The terminal expanded its capacity to 91Mt last year, but even with Transnet railing at an annualised rate of 70Mt in December compared with 62,9Mt a year previously, the new capacity is underutilised. Transnet Freight Rail CEO Siyabonga Gama revealed plans earlier this month for a new...
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