The export target of the Richards Bay Coal Terminal (RBCT) for 2017 is 77-million tonnes, which has been set against the backdrop of the terminal hitting an all-time monthly export record of eight-million tonnes in November.

In 2015, the RBCT exported a record 75.4-million tonnes of coal but dropped to 72.5-million tonnes last year.

Now the terminal is going all out to reap maximum benefit from the fully integrated value chain that the private-sector-owned terminal has established with State-owned Transnet, which RBCT CEO Alan Waller describes as “amazing”.

Waller expressed the RBCT’s ongoing commitment to efficiencies in partnership with Transnet Freight Rail and the Transnet National Ports Authority.

“The true value of the RBCT lies in the efficiency and reliability with which the terminal can move a tonne of coal,” Waller told a visiting media contingent, which included Creamer Media’s Mining Weekly.

The 40-year-old terminal is in the midst of a R1.4-billion equipment- replacement project, which remains on time and on budget for completion in January 2018.

RBCT engineering and project manager Bill Murphy told Mining Weekly that the installation and erection of the new equipment would in no way interrupt the operation of the terminal, which would continue to function without interference.

He expressed strong confidence in Chinese company TZME, which is nearing the completion of a new shiploader under Sandvik Mining Systems.

Outgoing RBCT chairperson Mike Teke announced his stepping-down as chairperson.

Former CEO Nosipho Siwisa-Damasane is the new incoming chairperson, with Teke remaining on the board as a nonexecutive director.

Black women own 6.18% of the RBCT, which is a 32.53% black-owned terminal, where 9 000-plus trains delivered coal for more than 900 vessels from coal mines as far away as 1 060 km.

The terminal averaged 76 vessels a month in 2016, peaking at 95 vessels in November when it pulled out all the stops to despatch the record eight-million tonnes.

Trains peaked at 868 in October, two short of a record-breaking level, with an average of 25 trains a day being tipped.

The terminal is in the process of reallocating the four-million-tonne coal export entitlement for junior miners in terms of the underused Quattro scheme.