South Africa’s main coal terminal, which is expanding to become the world’s largest, will assign capacity to junior miners in line with the upgrade of the railway lines leading to the port, Reuters reports.
“Richards Bay Coal Terminal (RBCT) is due to expand its export capacity to 91 million tonnes by the end of this year from 76 million tonnes, but transport to the port may dictate how much of that new capacity can be used. In 2008, RBCT exported only 61.8 million tonnes of coal, partly due to delays and derailments on the coal lines and as logistics group Transnet struggles to bring all the necessary coal to the port.
“Transnet Freight Rail (TFR) is investing heavily to upgrade the railway infrastructure to be able to export up to 81 million tonnes, but has said it will refuse to invest more as long as returns are not guaranteed by long-term deals. RBCT said junior miners would be assigned port allocation in line with TFR’s improvements on the lines, adding negotiations with the new users were at an advanced stage. ‘New entrants would receive throughput capacity in line with the build up of TFR capacity until such time that TFR capacity is able to meet the 91 million tonnes per annum,’ it said.
“RBCT said interest from black economic empowerment mining firms was growing and it had undertaken preliminary studies to grow the terminal’s capacity beyond 91 million tonnes.”

Original article [Railways Africa]