Rail capacity for Mozambique

Vale transported 10 Mt of coal from its open cast Moatize mine to the ports of Beira and Nacala in the first 10 months of this year.

In anticipation of much bigger coal exports in the near future, Mozambique continues to build rail and port infrastructure.

It appears that Vale’s coal trains on the Sena line to the Port of Beira did not run between late July and November because of attacks by Renamo fighters, suggesting that the situation was much worse than previously admitted.

A new rail freight service has been launched between Zambia, Zimbabwe and the Mozambican port of Beira.

The government of Mozambique has announced that the upgrade of the Sena Line between Moatize and the port of Beira will be completed by the end of March, 21 months after it began. The work will more than triple the railway’s handling capacity from 6.5 to 20 Mtpa. A Portuguese joint venture of Edivisia and Mota-Engil is undertaking the work under a €163M contract. Funding for the project was arranged by Standard Bank Mozambique, an offshoot of South Africa’s Standard Bank.

In the latest in a long line of expansion announcements for Mozambican ports, Cornelder has begun work on constructing a new fertiliser terminal at the Port of Beira at a cost of US$35M.