RICHARDS BAY (miningweekly.com) – South Africa’s Richards Bay Coal Terminal (RBCT), which exported an all-time record 71.3-million tons of coal in 2014, is targeting 74-million tons for 2015.

RBCT CEO Nosipho Siwisa-Damasane told the media here on Tuesday that last year’s export performance was the best ever for the private-sector-owned  terminal, which works as a fully integrated supply chain with State-owned Transnet Freight Rail, which railed in 72.4-million tons in 2014 from coal mines up to 850 km away.

“It’s a number that we want to beat,” Siwisa-Damasane told Mining Weekly Online at the world-class terminal, which has a current capacity to export 91-million tons a year.

RBCT is chaired by Mike Teke, who is currently also president of the Chamber of Mines of South Africa.

In 2014, the State-owned National Ports Authority provided marine services to 786 vessels that called at the terminal.

Five tipplers offload rail wagons at a rate of 5 500 t an hour and can empty a 100-wagon train in less than two hours.

Preliminary research work has been done on a Phase 6 expansion of the terminal, which would increase the capacity by 19-million tons a year to 110-million tons a year.

The potential equipment and capacity requirements for this expansion have been established through research work.

RBCT, which is on a path of continuous improvement, achieved 97.65% of the 73-million-ton target set for 2014, despite the impact of a power outage in February and an oil spill in April.

The 519-employee company, which is owned by the 16 big and small coal-mining companies that use it, has a better-than-demanded 28.29% black economic-empowerment (BEE) shareholding, with black women making up 3.11% of the BEE stake.

Four-million tons of capacity under the Quattro banner are allocated to 23 junior miners, in a process that has been reviewed every year for the past three years.

In 2014, an average of 27 trains a day - based on a 100-wagon yardstick although they arrive in 200-wagon batches - called at the terminal with the coal that went to 41 countries, 67% to Asian countries, 25% to Europe and 6.5% to Africa.

After RBCT lost two-million tons to power supply failure, State electricity utility Eskom installed an additional overhead line, which means RBCT is now served by three separate power lines to avoid a repeat of last year's setback when two power lines failed at the same time.

Operations were also hit last year when an old decommissioned pipeline caused an oil spill.

Trains are scheduled to the terminal from 49 loadout points in the Kwazulu-Natal and Mpumalanga provinces.

Some 50 km of 2.2-m-wide belt conveyors, moving at a rate of up to 22 km an hour, transport most of the coal directly to 92 individual stock areas, where yard machines stockpile the coal at a rate of up to 6 000 t an hour.

Coal is reclaimed from the stockpiles into four silos and then on to ships.

One shiploader can achieve a loading rate of 12 000 t an hour, a second is able to do 10 000 t an hour and the remaining two have a maximum load rate of 8 500 t an hour.

The RBCT’s centralised control system is in a 42 m-high control tower, from which stockyard machines are coordinated.

Siwisa-Damasane’s significantly transformed general management team is made up of Alan Waller (finance), Jabu Mdaki (operations), Judith Nzimande (human resources), Bill Murphy (engineering), Kubendren Naidoo (maintenance), Zanele Mthiyane (health, safety, environment and community) and Casper Mbuyazi (legal, risk and compliance).

Environmentally, the terminal is virtually dust-free.