Transnet Freight Rail (TFR) still expects to take delivery of the first 10 of 95 new dual-electric locomotives in December, CEO Siyabonga Gama said on Monday, dismissing claims that the contract awarded to China South Rail (CSR) to build the new rolling stock was six months behind schedule.

“There is nothing that has changed from the day we entered into the contract with CSR,” he told Engineering News Online on the sidelines of the 2013 Southern Africa Transport Conference, in Pretoria.

In October last year, TFR awarded a R2.6-billion contract for the supply of the electric locomotives to a consortium comprising CSR's Zhuzhou Electric Locomotive and local black economic-empowerment (BEE) consortium Matsetse Basadi for its general freight business.

The parties had agreed on a December delivery date, but last week financial daily Business Day reported that CSR’s Zhuzhou Electric Locomotive had indicated that it would not be able to deliver the locomotives until at least June next year.

However, Gama stated that the locomotive delivery schedule remained unchanged from the timeframes announced in October, with the first ten units to be delivered in December this year and commissioned in March 2014, following endurance tests to determine readiness for operations.

“Everything we have entered into with the contract with CSR will be delivered by the time it is supposed to be delivered.

“In fact, our engineers have just returned from China last week and they have told me that we are actually ahead of schedule,” Gama insisted.

Transnet spokesperson Mboniso Sigonyela highlighted in a statement that the remaining 85 locomotives would be manufactured locally in line with Transnet’s commitment to localisation of the manufacturing of imported machinery through the company’s supplier development programmes.

He also dismissed suggestions that TFR had awarded the locomotive tender to a Chinese consortium because of the country’s ambitions to advance business relations with other countries in the Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, or Brics, group of nations. Sigonyela stated that the bidders were evaluated according to price, technical ability and supplier development, including BEE.

“Transnet wishes to assure its potential partners that the company’s procurement policy does not prioritise geographic origins as an evaluation criterion. The transaction was subjected to a rigorous auditing process conducted by Transnet internal audit, and received a clean bill of health,” he stated.

Further justifying Transnet’s decision to select CSR as the supplier, Sigonyela said: “While the delivery schedule was not the only selection criterion, it was one of the key considerations; other locomotive suppliers indicated that they would only be able to deliver the locomotives by 2017. That would not have met the requirements of our fleet renewal programme, which we are accelerating.”

The transaction formed part of Transnet’s revised R307-billion, seven-year infrastructure investment programme intended to ramp up capacity ahead of demand. About two-thirds of the investment programme would be spent at TFR to boost operational performance, reliability and overall energy efficiency in the company’s rail service.

Commenting on whether CSR had also submitted a bid for a larger contract to supply an additional 599 electric locomotives to TFR, Gama said that the tender had closed and that the company was evaluating the bids.