[Ferro-alloys.com]:

Eswatini Railway (ERS) Chief Executive officer Nixon Dlamini says the Sidvokodvo Coal Operation, which is a project the company is working on in partnership with Grinrod, a Mozambican-based operator of coal, has major spill-overs.

These include the employment of locals, truck operators buying fuel from the country and the use of locally owned trucks.

Dlamini said this last week when the Minister of Public Works and Transport, Chief Ndlaluhlaza Ndwandwe, led a delegation of his ministerial team, members of the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee and the director of Public Enterprise Unit (PEU) on a working tour of Eswatini Railways (ESR) projects and its operations.

Dlamini said this was a collaborative effort of the two teams, which had provided a lot of spill-overs to local road haulers to fetch the product from RSA with their South African counterparts and deliver it at Sidvokodvo.

“There are currently 40 per cent Eswatini road haulers servicing this business,” he said.

He said the local community had also benefited with the employment of emaswati to do various jobs in the operation. He said 50 locals were already employed.

“Most of the truck operators prefer to fill up their fuel in Eswatini since the cost is lower than in the neighbouring RSA,” he said.

Dlamini said this project was started because a lot of coal was being transported by road haulers through the Eastern part of the Republic of South Africa along the N4 through the Lubombo border to the Maputo Port, it had resulted in serious logistical issues, particularly at the border where trucks are stuck for more than 24 hours while attempting to cross.

“This results in costly delays to deliver the product to the port for loading and reaching markets on time,” explained Dlamini.

Dlamini said the Grinrod, an operator in the coal, Ferrochrome and other minerals space then explored a solution of transporting coal through Eswatini to the Maputo port.

Explored

“The solution explored availed itself in the form of a working relationship with ESR, where road haulers will deposit coal at the Sidvokodvo Train siding, and it will be loaded onto the train and be transported to the Maputo port,” said Dlamini.

He said this solution would eliminate the border bottleneck that had frustrated many logistics operators, like Grinrod through the Ressano Garcia route.
He added that ESR, through a logistics working relationship with Grinrod, had developed this solution.

“This operation will add the needed tonnage to the ESR operation, and utilise the previously underutilised Goba line that connects Eswatini railway network with that of our Mozambique counterparts,” said Dlamini.

Dlamini further disclosed that currently, ESR was on a three-year renewable contract with the Grinrod as their customer.

“This project wouldn’t be complete without the collaborative efforts with the Mozambique Railway operator (CFM), who provide the much needed locomotive and crew support to haul the cargo to the port. The synergies exhibited by these players have made it possible to pull off the project,” he said.

• [Editor:Alakay]