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FRIDAY 23 October 2009 NO. 1885
Hauliers DoT’s axle USAslamUK mass reduction proposal
Coega smelter unplugged – thanks to SA’s power supply woes By Ed Richardson
Proposed reduction of permissible axle mass from 9-tons per four-wheel axle to 8-tons on the secondary road system.
By Alan Peat The SA trucking community is up in arms about a letter of intent from the department of transport for a proposed reduction of permissible axle mass from 9-tons per fourwheel axle to 8-tons on the secondary road system. This to move commercial vehicles on to the primary road network, and preserve SA’s secondary road network, most of which, said the department, has “reached a stage of
commercial realities of the land transport industries,” he said. Roads should be built and maintained to be able to take the loads using them, he added, not by devising a haphazard plan to save road surfaces and move cargoes from road to rail. A plan which, he reckoned, would only add significantly to overall transport costs – with all the inflationary elements of such an event. Gavin Kelly, technical and operations manager of the To page 12
disintegration”. There is also a plan to encourage goods transport to move from roads to rail branch lines. It is the intention, said the DoT, “to prohibit the transportation of certain commodities on both the primary and secondary road networks, and the migration of the same to rail branch lines”. The DoT is living in a dream world, according to a Durban trucker. “This was devised by somebody sitting behind a desk, and not in touch with the
South Africa’s power supply woes have officially unplugged plans for a giant aluminium smelter in the Coega Industrial Development Zone. The announcement – made in a joint statement by The Department of Trade and Industry, Eskom, Industrial Development Corporation and Rio Tinto Alcan – states it was “jointly acknowledged that, although some progress was made in discussions regarding the supply of electricity to the Coega aluminium smelter project, it was insufficient to proceed”. This is hardly a surprise given the power shortages in South Africa – the Coega smelter would have used as much electricity as the Nelson Mandela Bay metro – and the main role-players have already moved on. Transnet is reconfiguring
the port of Ngqura to become the country’s container hub rather than the original plans for a 32-berth bulk port, and the Coega Development Corporation is focusing on less energy-intensive operations, apart from a planned giant PetroSA refinery, which could produce some of its own power from waste gases. What the formal aluminium smelter announcement does call into question is the future of the metals cluster planned for Coega – which is planned to cater for other smelters, such as iron, manganese and stainless steel. According to the joint statement “discussions between Eskom, Rio Tinto Alcan, IDC, and dti have continued over the past several months, but the parties agree that the current context regarding the supply of electricity To page 12
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