S Africa's Richards Bay Coal Terminal prepares for railway shutdown

Johannesburg (Platts)--18Apr2011/533 am EDT/933 GMT



Workers at South Africa's Richards Bay Coal Terminal will spend the next month building up stockpiles in an attempt to keep the wheels turning at the world's largest single coal terminal throughout a long railway shutdown.

The national freight carrier, Transnet, confirmed to Platts it is shutting down the 600 km coal line, which runs from the heart of the Mpumalanga coalfield to the coast, for maintenance from May 23 to June 11.

The line, which is already struggling to ship enough coal for export, is closed regularly for routine repairs.

Zama Luthuli, a spokeswoman for RBCT, said the terminal needed to build stockpiles of more than 4 million mt to have a chance of working through the shutdown.


Luthuli said: "We are preparing for this; we usually try to build up our stocks so we can keep going during the shutdown."

Sandile Simelane, a spokesman for Transnet, said railway workers were planning to repair everything from the track to network signals.

Simelane said: "This is a planned shutdown. We have to do the maintenance work, we need to replenish the railway, and otherwise we could be plagued by derailments. This is a planned shutdown and it should have given RBCT and mining companies enough time to plan around it."

RBCT shipped 5.36 million mt of coal during March and 4.57 million mt in February.

--Chris Bishop, newsdesk@platts.com

Source: http://www.platts.com/RSSFeedDetailedNews/RSSFeed/Coal/8805626

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