There is a rare bit of good news coming out of Transnet. The state-owned logistics group's freight rail arm has clawed its bulk-commodity performance back to pre-Covid levels, and is on track to move more than 170 million tonnes this year. Last week alone, 165 trains ran to the Richards Bay Coal Terminal, the country's main coal export gateway.
Coal leads the recovery
The turnaround is clearest on the coal line. At the current pace, coal shipments are heading for a target of 65 million tonnes by the end of 2026, a recovery credited to better locomotive availability and tighter security that has curbed cable theft and vandalism. Richards Bay's coal terminal shipped 57.66 million tonnes in 2025, up more than 10%, an early sign the line was stabilising. It is a sharp bounce from the roughly 140 million tonnes railed in 2022, though still well short of the 226 million tonnes moved in 2016, before years of underinvestment, theft and maintenance backlogs sent volumes tumbling.
Containers are the harder problem
Not every part of the network is mending at the same pace. Coal, iron ore and general freight each make up roughly a third of what Transnet moves, and it is that last basket that is lagging. Ian Bird of lobby group Business for South Africa says bulk commodities like coal, iron ore and manganese are clearly trending up, but the same cannot be said for general freight and containers. Those, he notes, are more complex to move, and improvement has been slow. Work is under way, including a 25-year, R285m container-handling agreement Transnet's ports authority signed with the Grindrod Eyamakhosi joint venture to expand capacity at Richards Bay. The bigger prize is still ahead: Transport Minister Barbara Creecy, who says the reforms aim to re-establish rail as the backbone of the freight logistics system, has set a target of 250 million tonnes of total rail freight, supported by 11 private train operators gearing up to run from late 2026, each expected to add 20 to 24 million tonnes a year once fully operational.
Getting there depends on fixing the container backlog and keeping the recovery on the rails. For now, though, Transnet can point to something it has not had in years: momentum.
