JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – A new logistical concept involving the overland conveying of coal to inland terminals for processing prior to rapid railing to ocean terminals is being proposed for new coal basins, to boost efficiencies, cut costs, ensure economically feasible junior-miner participation and bring bulk-commodity management into the twenty-first century.

The basic idea of the new concept, being put forward by project house Logiman of Sandton, is to facilitate the continuous flow of coal from mines to ocean terminals, free of all intermediate time-absorbing interruptions, including those at rail spurs and marshalling yards. (Also watch attached Creamer Media video).

The concept involves building coal-processing infrastructure at inland terminals so that individual mines are relieved of the need to invest in their own coal-processing facilities.

Its introduction is not expected to cost more than current expenditure on individual systems and is likely to bolster junior-miner involvement.

Overland conveyors are strongly favoured as the transporters of coal to inland terminals, where it is envisaged that state-of-the-art equipment will prepare the coal for rapid loading on to a rail shuttle.

“I would like to combine all the processes, from the coal face to the ocean,” says Lyonell Fliss, the associate director technology of Logiman, where he is involved with the development of new industrial concepts.

His proposal, which is best suited to new coal basins where it would be implemented in accordance with a master plan, is designed to eliminate processing and transportation bottlenecks.

Advocated for Southern Africa is the drawing up of a master plan that would view South Africa’s emerging Waterberg coalfield and the large adjoining Botswana coalfield as one big whole, on the basis that the Waterberg really represents only the tip of a far larger regional coal basin that extends into Botswana, with similar approaches adopted in Mozambique.

The concept hinges on attaining master plan buy-in by all parties as the starting point.

“In this master plan, we have to eliminate stumbling blocks in the conventional systems and reduce the double handling of coal at individual mines and collection points,” Fliss tells Creamer Media’s Mining Weekly Online in the attached video interview, that can be viewed by clicking on the arrow in the picture accompanying this article.

Inland terminals and ocean terminals will need to match one another’s performances.

Currently, coal exportation from South Africa is based on State-owned Transnet Freight Rail (TFR) working in a fully integrated supply chain with the private-sector-owned Richards Bay Coal Terminal (RBCT), which exported a record 71.3-million tonnes of coal in 2014 and which is targeting 74-million tonnes for 2015 – still well below its export capacity of 91-million tonnes a year.

RBCT is owned by the 16 big and small coal mining companies that use it.

TFR, which last year railed in a record 72.4-million tonnes from coal mines up to 850 km away from the 519-employee RBCT, offloaded at a rate of 5 500 t an hour and emptied 100-wagon trains in less than two hours.

In 2014, an average of 27 trains a day – based on a 100-wagon yardstick, although they arrive in 200-wagon batches – called at the terminal with the coal going to 41 countries, 67% in Asia, 25% in Europe and 6.5% in Africa.

Some 50 km of 2.2-m-wide belt conveyors move at a rate of up to 22 km an hour to transport most of the coal directly to 92 individual stock areas, where yard machines stockpile the coal at a rate of up to 6 000 t an hour.

Coal is reclaimed from the stockpiles into four silos and then discharged on to ships by shiploaders, one of which is able to load at a rate of 12 000 t an hour, a second at 10 000 t an hour and two at up to 8 500 t an hour.

The centralised control system is in a 42-m-high control tower, from which stockyard machines are coordinated.

Preliminary research work has been done on a Phase 6 expansion of RBCT, which would increase the capacity of the terminal by 19-million tons a year to 110-million tons a year.

On the issue of facilitation of juniors, Transnet GM commercial Divyesh Kalan reported earlier this year that junior coal mining companies at times presented challenges in not always meeting their export allocations under the Quattro scheme, which provides four-million tonnes export allocation to juniors a year.

Kalan also told the IHS Energy South African Coal Exports Conference 2015, attended by Mining Weekly Online, that the State-owned enterprise’s biggest challenge in the expansion of the coal line capacity to 91-million tons, was obtaining additional power on the line from the supply-constrained State electricity utility, Eskom.