A top mediator needs to intervene to resolve the differences between State rail authority Transnet and the private-sector-owned Richards Bay Coal Terminal (RBCT).
The South African economy will lose important export revenues if this spat is not resolved.
Transnet, upset at the lack of accommodation for small emerging black coal producers, has threatened to build a new coal terminal next door to the RBCT in order to meet the needs of “the small guys”.
Transnet group CEO Brian Molefe last week came down firmly on the side of “the small guys”, as is reported on pages 12 and 13 of this edition of Mining Weekly.
But given Molefe’s revelation that the meeting with BHP Billiton was “disastrous” and that the parties “nearly came to blows”, it seems necessary for a white knight to come between the State and the private sector.
It seems inappropriate for Transnet to build additional new port capacity next door when the 91-million-ton RBCT capacity remains 20-million tons ahead of the volume of coal being railed.
The RBCT is a large, efficient port and has done a great job for the South African economy and perhaps the Treasury’s public–private participation units could assist in streamlining a new partnership in view of major expected demand building up in the years to come, particularly from India.
Big and small coal producers need to be accommodated both at the port and on rail and, in their usual style, South Africans should sit down together and create a win-win model that works for the good of this country’s struggling economy.
While RBCT believes it has already done as much as it can for black economic-empowerment producers, the reality is that increasing numbers of emerging black producers are begging Transnet to help them get into world markets.
There will have to be give and take as the participants of South Africa’s coal value chain put an end to the misalignment.
Webber Wentzel mining partner Manus Booysen last month called for coal value chain participants to meet urgently at the highest level to ensure that full advantage was taken of the colossal opportunity that was rapidly building up for the export of additional coal to an energy-hungry India.
Speaking on his return from the McCloskey coal conference in New Delhi, Booysen called for collaboration, cooperation and realistic under- standing.