South Africa’s port and freight-rail operator is working with Eskom to reduce the ailing power utility’s costs by increasing the supply of coal delivered by rail and improving the quality and reliability of the primary feedstock for its thermal plants.
“The objective is to increase the quality of coal, reliability of deliveries and reduce the cost of delivery,” Mike Fanucchi, Transnet group executive for commercial sales and marketing, said in an interview in Cape Town on Wednesday. “Coal delivered by rail is a lot cheaper than by road.”
Transnet has held talks with André de Ruyter, Eskom’s new CEO, on setting up a joint team to handle the logistics. The companies are working “very closely together to optimise plans to get coal to the plants. We are also working with miners to get the stockpiles to the power stations,” Fanucchi said.
“Our objective is to reduce the cost of electricity, the cost of doing business and the cost to ourselves since we are a big Eskom customer.” — Reported by Felix Njini, (c) 2020 Bloomberg LP
