Congolese copper mine Kamoa-Kakula have become launch partners for Lobito railway
TRAFIGURA and Kamoa-Kakula agreed long-term commitments to transport minerals via the Lobito Atlantic Railway for a minimum term of six years – a deal that will help alleviate some of the mining truck congestion on South African roads.
The terms of the Reserved Capacity Agreements were signed during the Mining Indaba in Cape Town, and mark the first long-term commercial commitments to the Lobito Atlantic Railway, a new import-export trade route between the African Copperbelt and Angola’s Atlantic coast terminating at the port of Lobito. Kamoa-Kakula produced 393 551 tons of copper in concentrate in 2023, much of which was transported by truck to Durban or to Dar es Salaam in Tanzania.
This at a time South African roads are rapidly deteriorating due to elevated levels of mining trucks caused by Transnet freight woes. The 2024 annual production guidance for Kamoa-Kakula is between 440 000 to 490 000 tons of copper in concentrate, following the anticipated completion of the Phase 3 concentrator during the third quarter of 2024, so there was a need to shift to the cheaper rail option.
The Lobito Atlantic Railway uses the rail bed of the 120-year-old Benguela Railway and its original design capacity was 20 million tons of cargo and four million passengers per year. The railway is Cape gauge, or 1 067mm (3ft 6in), so it can use locomotives and rail trucks from other railways in southern Africa.
On July 4, 2023, the Lobito Atlantic Railway company secured a 30-year concession for railway services. This joint venture involved Trafigura, a Singapore-based company, Mota-Engil, headquartered in Portugal, and Vecturis, a Belgium-based rail operator.
The concession agreement encompassed the entire 1 300km railway line in Angola, extending to the 400km line into the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and also includes any potential service extensions in Zambia. The link is expected to ramp up to an annual export capacity of one million tons per annum before the end of the decade. Trafigura’s allocation of export capacity on the Lobito Atlantic Railway will be up to 450 000 tons per annum from 2025.
The African Development Bank (AfDB) in October 2023 signed a Memorandum of Understanding, joining global partners to mobilise resources for the Lobito Corridor.