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1.5 billion, while the reserves at Morupule exceed 5 billion tonnes with a potential export capacity of about 100 million tonnes a year.


Rail operators in neighbouring countries are already vying for this traffic. South Africa’s Transnet Freight Rail (TFR) hopes to soon start running two 35-wagon trains each week from Morupule. In the meantime, TFR is currently running 45-wagon limestone trains from PPC’s Lime Acres quarry in South Africa to the Morupule B thermal power station, boosting BR’s annual tonnage to 250,000 tonnes. BR also recently operated a test coal train for African Energy Resources on the Botswana - Zimbabwe - Mozambique corridor which could see coal trains running on this eastern route via Bulawayo and Chicualacuala to Maputo. BR board member Mrs Lesedi Moakhofi recently confirmed that there was “excess track capacity of 1.7 million tonnes … to move commodities in that corridor.”


The quest to transport Mmamabula coal traffic by rail is beginning to shape up as a battle of wills between TFR and the supporters of the ambitious Trans- Kalahari Railway (TKR), a proposed 1500km heavy-haul line running west from the Botswana coalfields to connect with an existing railhead at Gobabis in Namibia.


USAid report. Locally-generated traffic mostly comprised coal to the smelters at Selebi Phikwe and, more recently, to the soda ash plant at Sua Pan. Freight tonnage improved with the opening in 1992 of a new 174km branch line from Francistown to the Makgadigade pans salt and soda ash deposits. Inbound traffic consisted of cement, fuel and grain, commodities that to this day, along with a daily container train from Johannesburg, still account for the bulk of inbound train movements.


In 2006, the railway embarked on a


turnaround strategy which saw the investment of millions of dollars due to a commodity boom that may yet turn BR into a heavy-haul railway. Botswana is sitting on massive and as


yet largely untapped coal deposits. Reserves at Mmamabula, near Mahalapye, are estimated at 2.4 billion tonnes with an extractable tonnage of


IRJ July 2013


TFR CEO Mr Siyabonga Gama told delegates at the Coaltrans Southern Africa conference in May that Mmamabula would be linked to South Africa’s own heavy-haul coal line to Richards Bay by 2020, using a new line to be built to the untapped Waterberg coalfield adjoining Mmamabula and then on to Botswana. With Transnet set to spend Rand 300bn ($US 29.8bn) on new projects, locomotives and wagons this decade, its proposed line from Waterberg could reach Botswana before the first spike is even driven on the proposed $US 10bn TKR project which has been under discussion for nearly 30 years. The TKR’s backers may have taken heart in recent months after Namibian authorities said the project had been agreed “in principle.” Namibia is under pressure from local business to fix TransNamib, the ailing state-owned railway which has suffered from years of scant investment (see panel on p28). As well as the new line from Botswana, the TKR project will involve complete rehabilitation of the TransNamib line from Gobabis, via the capital Windhoek, to a new $N 20bn ($US 2bn) port at Walvis Bay. The link


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