Heavy haul
Walking on coal
The world’s leading mining companies are preparing massive operations in Mozambique’s Moatize basin which holds one of the world’s largest untapped coal deposits. Kevin Smith and John Batwell look at plans to develop railway infrastructure to aid extraction of the country’s mineral wealth.
Photo: Paul Ash
swaths of Africa remain an industrial backwater. Volatile political regimes which replaced decades of colonialism lumbered many countries with a culture of instability leading international businesses to consider investments as too risky.
D But this is changing. With an
increasingly business-friendly climate emerging in some African countries, and substantial demand for natural resources from Brazil, India and China in particular, mining companies are racing to get their share of this natural resource bonanza.
This is certainly the case in the Moatize region of Mozambique where coal deposits are so rich that in some areas it can be found on the surface. The region is estimated to have reserves
IRJ October 2012
ESPITE possessing some of the richest natural resource deposits in the world, great
to rival Australia’s Bowen Basin, and is predicted to provide 25% of the world’s coking coal by 2025.
The Moatize is inevitably on the radar of the world’s mining giants with 40 separate companies now holding contracts across Tete province. However, the main problem for these companies is not extracting the material but getting it out of the country. The sheer volume of coal is too great to transport it by road and although many of the country’s railways have been improved after the ravages of a 16-year civil war which ended in 1992, they are not up to the task at hand. The existing primary rail artery, the Sena line, which runs 575km from the heart of Tete province to the port of Beira is currently only capable of handling 2 million tonnes of coal per year. However, a substantial improvement
scheme is underway. Mozambique Ports and Railway (CFM) said in June that it expects to complete a long- awaited rehabilitation of the line in November which will increase capacity to 6.5 million tonnes of coal per year. A further expansion will then take place which is projected to up capacity to 12 million tonnes by the end of 2013 and 20 million tonnes by 2016. CFM stepped in to complete the upgrade after Mozambique’s government cancelled a contract with India’s Rites and Ircon which was due to complete work in September 2009. Brazilian mining giant Vale began using the line in September last year, and is hoping to move up to 4.5 million tonnes by the end of the year. And with other mining companies which have been forced to use trucks up to now keen to follow suit, coal production is likely to further boost Mozambique’s economy
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