Hundreds of trucks filled with coal destined for Europe were backed up for 7km on the N2 freeway in Richards Bay on Friday because the port lacks capacity to process them.
Transnet's unreliable rail network has forced coal miners to move their product by road.
Nkululeko Molefe, corporate affairs manager for Transnet National Ports Authority, told the Sunday Times yesterday that cable theft and the lack of freight rail availability from their sister company, Transnet Freight Rail, had seen a rapid increase in the number of trucks using the port.
“One train is equivalent to 400 trucks on the road, but due to issues such as derailments, which can take between three to four days to get the rail line back in service, we're seeing more trucks at the port.”
Molefe said the port had capacity to handle around 90MT transported by rail per year, but was only handling around 52MT, with about half of coal for export now being transported by road.
The port can process around 1,500 trucks per shift, or 4,500 trucks in 24 hours. This is not enough to cut the queues on the N2, Molefe said.
Last November Transnet introduced a colour-coding system to differentiate the trucks and their destinations, he said, and in another effort to smooth operations started a booking system in December, but this was “met by push backs because of the coal demand”.
Gavin Kelly, CEO of the Road Freight Association, said: “The port is not processing the vehicles at an efficient rate. Transnet has continually blamed trucks for arriving without 'slots' — but the slots are booked through the mining companies that are exporting the coal through the port.”
Kelly said there was a communication gap or breakdown between the mines and the port.
“No transporter would want to take the chance of loading and travelling a vast distance from the mine to the port on the chance that the truck might get into the port.”
He said the port needs to ensure that, as at border crossings, trucks should not be able to load and leave the mine “without a system which identifies and is aware of the volumes heading towards the port”.
“The idea would be to control the flow and therefore the pressure at the source. Secondly, there needs to be a clear understanding of why there are delays in offloading trucks at the port,” Kelly said.
The Russia-Ukraine conflict is largely credited as the main source of the rising demand for South Africa's coal, with prices increasing steadily over the past year.
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