The Richards Bay Coal Terminal (RBCT), shown above, has five tandem tipplers that offloaded 5 500 t of South African-mined coal an hour from 27 trains that called at the private-sector terminal daily in 2017. Seven stacker reclaimers, two stackers and one reclaimer piled up and recovered 42 grades of coal on and off 98 stockpiles, allowing four shiploaders to load a record 76.47-million tonnes of coal onto 907 ships that used the RBCT's six berths last year. Coal is South Africa's top foreign exchange earner and, currently, off an amortised base, remains the least-cost baseload fuel option for electricity generation.