The provisional coal terminal at Beira, in Mozambique, is expecting to handle six-million tons of coal for export this year. This will amount to the pro-visional terminal’s maximum capacity. This quantity will probably comprise 4.5-million tons from Brazilian miner Vale’s Moatize mine and 1.5-million tons from Anglo-Australian group Rio Tinto’s Benga operation, which lie near each other in the African country’s Tete province. Last year, the terminal handled 2.5-million tons of coal, all from Moatize. This was reported last week by the Beira bureau of the Mozambican newspaper Notícias.
On February 28, the Mozam-bican railway company, CFM, reopened the Sena line, which links Tete to Beira and which is used to convey coal to the coast for export. The 575-km-long line had to be closed because of serious damage caused by torrential rains, which had washed away three culverts and some 800 m of track and ballast. CFM suffered damages of about $10-million (including lost traffic revenues).
On March 20, Vale announced that it had lifted the force majeure regarding its contracts for coal from Moatize, imposed on February 15 because of the closure of the line. The miner estimated that this decision had “impacted on the loading of metallurgical coal” to the amount of some 500 000 t. Notícias reported that the halting of the coal trains had resulted in the Port of Beira, which is managed by Cornelder de Moçambique (a joint venture between Cornelder Holdings, of the Netherlands, and CFM), suffering a loss of $500 000 a week.
Since the Sena line was reopened, it has experienced average daily traffic of between three and five trains, each of two locomotives and 42 wagons, and each train carrying 2 700 t of coal. In the last week or so of March, four bulk carriers, each of about 35 000 gross tons, called at Beira to load coal.
That same week, CFM held its seventeenth annual directors meeting. The company, whose full name is Empresa Pública de Portos e Caminhos de Ferro de Moçambique, is State-owned and is also responsible for ports. It was announced at the meet- ing that CFM would invest 240-billion meticais (about R72.45-billion) in improving, expanding and increasing the capacity of its network and facilities, as well as improving its equipment and training. (The timescale for this investment is not clear.) The aim is to better support the country’s expanding mining, natural gas and forestry sectors.
A particular issue highlighted was the need to eliminate derail- ments, which cause serious losses for the company and its customers. CFM president Rosário Mualeia affirmed this. “We have to be rigorous with railway safety matters, seeking to create working conditions which will allow the engine drivers to detect the faults before [derailments] occur.”
In 2012, the country’s railway freight traffic came to 2.6-million tons per kilometre, an increase of 124.2% over the 2011 figure of 1.1-million tons per kilometre, while the ports handled 25.7-million tons (a 32.2% rise over 2011’s 19.4-million tons). Last year, the company achieved a profit, before tax, of 2.6-billion meticais (some R780-million), which represented a 95% increase on the figure for 2011. (Rail passenger traffic also rose, by 17.7%, from 248-million in 2011 to 292-million last year.) These increases were made pos- sible by investments that have already been made.

A few days earlier, Transport and Communications Minister Paulo Zucula affirmed that the government wanted CFM to partner with the mining and hydrocarbons companies operating in the country regarding the transport infrastructure they require, includ- ing railways, ports, terminals and associated infrastructure. This reflected the government’s desire to have a share in all the big projects under way or planned in Mozambique in order to protect national interests. Zucula indicated that there were, at the moment, 12 such “anchor projects” focused on coal, gas and oil.