Reuters reported that South Africa logistics group Transnet has been moving coal to the Richards Bay Coal Terminal at a record rate of 1.6 million tonnes per week with stockpiles at the terminal rising.

Mr Brian Molefe CEO of Transnet said "We've been transporting on a weekly basis of around 1.6 million tonnes what has been exported out of the terminal has been around 1.4 million tonnes. There are stockpiles at RBCT of around 5 million tonnes."

He added that the company was exploring options to transport the coal to alternative ports around RBCT to make sure more shipments go out. He also said the allocation of coal export capacity to emerging coal miners needed to be increased.

Coal producers in South Africa including Anglo American, BHP Billiton, Exxaro, Optimum Coal and Xstrata have been eager to export more coal to meet rising demand from India and China but have been limited by infrastructure bottlenecks.

Recent improvements on the coal line have been paying off, limiting bottlenecks and derailments on the line. However, the rail line capacity is still far below RBCT's of 91 million tonnes per year.

Transnet plans to raise capacity on the rail line to 81 million tonnes by 2015. Last year the logistics group moved 63 million tonnes to RBCT.

(Sourced from Reuters)