MFLF Workgroup - Land Transport Sector

Context

Intermodal Transport is one of four focus areas within the Mpumalanga Freight Logistics Forum Modal Workgroup's Land Transport Sector and is discussed below. The other focus areas are:

• Cross Border Transport
• Rail Transport
• Road Transport

 

On this page:

Overview
Intermodal Interfaces in Mpumalanga
MFLF Objectives
Invitation to Stakeholders

 

Intermodal Interfaces

The NFLS recognises South Africa's intermodal interfaces as poor, affecting particularly the higher value container and break-bulk but to a lesser extent the bulk supply chain. It identifies the three key impediments to inter-modalism as:

• A lack of adequate infrastructure to accommodate double stack rail service in terms of container handling and movements in the country because of topography
• Operational inefficiencies at terminals, e.g. City Deep, for managing and tracking shipments, preclearance, scheduling of equipment usage and management and traffic flows
• Institutional constraints and relationships qith domestic and foreign partner organisations, with conflicting inter-governmental mandates, customs clearance and other data requirements

The NFLS furthemore identifies the following key challenges facing intermodal interfaces:

 

NFLS Intermodal Interfaces Challenges

• Inefficient intermodal planning
• Management issues and allocation of responsibilities not focussed on strenghtening integration
• Lack of appropriate modern infrastructure and facilities
• Lack of customer service focus
• Unwillingness to share supply chain information between customers and operators and between operators
• Lack of long term vision
• Lack of value added services
• Poor environmental quality at many intermodal interchanges (e.g. City Deep) is a deterrent to potential investors and developers
• Security
• Inefficient processes (low productivity) and unreliable services (unpredictability) at key intermodal facilities
• Lack of appropriate technology to enable seamless intermodalism
• Capacity under-utilisation

The NFLS highlights the lack of infrastructure investment and failure to arrest deterioration as some of the key obstacles to promoting seamless intermodalism, however it singles out the unwillingness of operators to share information and coordinate modal processes at intermodal facilities as a major impediment to addressing the overall intermodal challenges.

 

Intermodal Interfaces in Mpumalanga

Mpumalanga has no designated intermodal rail-road interfaces. In 2004, approximately 6,000 containers were consigned from different points in the province along the Maputo Corridor. The busiest container handling facility in 2004 was at Trichardt, which handled ca. 130,000 containers loaded from the synfuels and chemical plants in the Secunda area. Piet Retief handled most of the container movement along the Richard's Bay coal line, counting approx. 30,000 containers.

Bulk freight makes up a huge portion of the intermodal logistics system in the province, where very large volumes of coal and other mineral and mining products are transported by road from shafts on mining properties and trans-loaded to the rail system for export or to reduction plants and smelters. Large volumes of timber are also conveyed by road transport to sidings and loaded onto rail for onward movement to papermills and factories making paper and board and amounted to 13 million tons in 2004.

Source: Mpumalanga Freight Transport Databank (2006)

 

MFLF Land Transport Sector Objectives - Intermodal Interfaces

• To promote an appropriate modal split of cargo between road and rail
• To develop necessary facilities
• To create efficient and reliable services
• To develop efficiencies in transit times and resultant reduction in door to door costs

The MFLF presents an opportunity to all stakeholders to address the key challenges of improving intermodal interfaces in the province and to enable the province's stakeholders to make a representative contribution to intermodal interface development in other provinces as well as at the Port of Maputo.

 

Inviation to Stakeholders

All stakeholders are invited to participate in the Mpumalanga Freight Logistics Forum Workgroup - Land Transport Sector. If you are not already on the MFLF Secretariat's email newsletter list, you can subscribe (note that this is a high volume distribution list) or you can keep up to date with upcoming MFLF events by regulalry checking our Upcoming Events page or through RSS.