Richards Bay Coal Terminal (RBCT) has seen a 56% improvement in its security situation, reported RBCT CEO Alan Waller at the recent Southern African Coal Conference 2026, held in Cape Town. “We’re still having incidents every night,” he cautioned. “But our teams are getting to them before they can do any damage. The danger is regression.”

Transnet was also “paying a lot of attention” to security on the coal line, which brought the energy mineral from the inland collieries to the RBCT, assured Transnet chief business development officer Yolisa Kani. The aim was to prevent and pre-empt the theft of critical infrastructure, not to react to it. But, she warned, while people were getting arrested, convictions were not happening.

“We cannot, as an industry, afford a major disruption,” pointed out Waller. A derailment, for example, would be such a major disruption. There was a need for the maintenance backlog on the coal line to be cleared and for continual proactive maintenance.

“We are aware that the infrastructure is in the state that it is in,” reassured Kani. This infrastructure included locomotives and rolling stock, as well as tracks, power lines and signalling systems.

“The current work being done on [coal line] signalling is going to be a game changer,” highlighted Waller. Transnet was re-signalling the entire line electronic inter-blocking signals, which would allow the running of more trains.

RBCT was also modernising, he pointed out, bringing in new equipment and advancing automation. These moves were to increase both operational and maintenance efficiency, not to cut salaries. The company had downsized, but there had not been a single retrenchment.  The aim was to get the terminal “fit” to handle increasing volumes. The new equipment that had already been installed was all proven technology and had already increased efficiency.

An annual throughput of 63-million tons to 65-million tons was “certainly deliverable”. (Transnet Freight Rail (TFR) was targeting transporting 62-million tons of coal to RBCT during the 2026/27 financial year.)

What the coal industry needed, however, was a return to the coal line and RBCT’s original maximum designed capacity of 75-million tons a year to 81-million tons a year. (The calculation being a theoretical maximum capacity of 81-million tons, with the system working at an actual efficiency level of 95%, giving a real-world throughput of 75-million tons to 77-million tons. TFR was targeting 77-million tons by 2028/29 at the latest.)