JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – Coal trader Wescoal Trading, in partnership with Logistics Intelligence (LQ), on Thursday opened a new environment-friendly product storage and distribution centre that would result in 10 000 t/m of coal being moved from road to rail in Cape Town.
This amount of coal was equal to about 350 road vehicles.
“Wescoal and Wescoal Trading are proud to be involved in this distribution centre, which is environment-friendly and which will reduce our carbon footprint in the overall coal supply process, as the coal barely touches the ground once extracted from the mines in Mpumalanga,” Wescoal CEO Andre Boje commented.
He added that this solution was one way in which Wescoal was taking a responsible approach to providing clients with coal a large distance away from the source, in a format and quality that would meet customer specifications in an environment-friendly manner.
“Together with our partner LQ and by optimising rail and Transnet Freight Rail’s Belcon [container terminal] location, we can assure clients of an efficient process coupled with a quality product,” Boje stated.
LQ explained that 12 m coal containers would be railed from the Pretcon container terminal, in Pretoria, and delivered to the new coal handling site on trailers where their contents would be decanted into a large hopper that could accommodate 30 t of coal.
From the hopper, the coal would then be fed by conveyor to be loaded into backdoor-shipper-owned containers for delivery or storage.
Meanwhile, LQ’s Dirch Olsen said a similar facility was already being planned for Port Elizabeth.
“This process is very clean and enables a seamless intermodal solution without adding cost to the supply chain, which fits in perfectly with what drives the LQ team – the concept of 'smart moves’,” he said.