Siza Mzimela on getting freight back on the rails
Transnet Freight’s new broom sees cable theft as biggest obstacle
● Siza Mzimela, CEO of Transnet Freight Rail (TFR) since April, says the greatest threat to her dream of turning it into a worldclass operation within five years is cable theft.
“This is a real challenge for us at the moment,” says Mzimela, 54, a former CEO of SAA and SA Express.
Almost coinciding with her arrival was an announcement by Transnet that cable theft had forced it to cancel 177 freight trains a month in the previous nine months.
Although all the main corridors have been affected, the hardest hit has been the Pretoria zone, which handles 35Mt of commodities a year.
Cable and signals theft in this area has had a particularly serious impact on Transnet’s general freight business (fuel, chemicals, grain, timber and so on) and on the vehicle manufacturing industry, which exports most of its product and relies heavily on TFR.
TFR contributes nearly 60% of Transnet’s total turnover.
Halting the theft of cable along its entire 36,000km rail network is a practical impossibility, so it has identified hotspots.
A major problem for TFR is that it shares the rail network with the largely defunct Passenger Rail Agency of SA (Prasa).
“We’re stepping in to assist Prasa. We share their network, so we have to worry about what’s happening in their space.
“We’re both realising we need to do things very differently going forward. We were being hit the hardest on the shared Prasa network.”
The two operations are improving their joint intelligence capacity, aided by drones and helicopters and soon, it is hoped, sensors backed up by “rapid rail police”.
Other measures include replacing copper cables with steel and aluminium “tiger wire”, which is less marketable and less likely to be stolen.
Diesel locomotives are being used along badly damaged sections, but staff first have to cut the hanging cables that are in the way.
This takes time, as does having to stop at depots to swop the diesel for electric locomotives. Not to mention load-shedding, which “hits us hard”, and people who build their shacks up against the lines.
Using diesel not only causes delays but imposes an added financial burden.
“It’s definitely not the most efficient way to run the business,” Mzimela says. But it’s better than having to cancel trains altogether. “This last week we cancelled five freight trains, which is a huge improvement on where we were very recently.”
TFR has seen an improvement in the volumes moved over the past couple of months, but still has only a 20% share of SA’s general freight market, which, as she says, is “very low” and needs to be improved urgently.
Road hauliers carry far more general freight than rail, mainly containers, although they’re 20% more expensive. TFR is working hard to increase its share of the container market, Mzimela says.
“It’s all about our ability to meet on-time performance demands, to ensure containers and other cargo arrive at the ports on time so our customers can meet the ships that have been allocated to them.”
Far too often this is not happening. The automobile manufacturers and mining industry say bottlenecks on the lines are the major constraint in their export value chain.
“We’ve been working with customers to improve our delivery in that space,” she says.
But cable theft makes it a constant, and uphill, battle. “We start off, then have to stop for an hour or two to remove some of the hanging cables they’ve been trying to steal. That obviously negatively impacts on the timing it takes to get to the ports.”
As a result, it is taking “at least” three times longer to move freight by rail than by road. “We’re not cancelling so many trains, but eight out of 10 trains are being delayed.”
Exacerbating the delays is the poor condition of many lines owing to lack of maintenance.
“Some of the material we need to repair the rail network, like rails, we have to import from abroad. We still don’t have a local rail manufacturer.”
Because of overseas and local lockdown restrictions, TFR has only now been able to start ordering what is required to fix the lines.
“We can still use the lines but due to lack of maintenance we have to restrict our speed. That impacts on the number of trains we can run and how efficient we are.”
The search is on for a local rail manufacturer, she says.
“It will improve our efficiencies. It makes no sense that we have so much steel in the country and yet have to import rails. It’s not as if years ago SA did not have the capacity and capability to do that.”
The last company to manufacturer rails locally was Highveld Steel.
She says a “significant number” of customers hit by the economic crisis have indicated they want to cut costs by switching to rail.
“The only reason they use road is because their product has to reach the ports at a certain time and we can’t guarantee that.
“They’re having more and more discussions with us to say, ‘How can we work together to assist you with some of the challenges you’re facing?’ Because they’d prefer to move their goods by rail.”
Mzimela’s appointment was criticised by some because of her lack of experience in rail freight.
“I’ve been in logistics. If you run an airline that’s logistics. This job is about logistics.”
In addition, she points out, she was chair of listed logistics entity Cargo Carriers for several years.
“So I haven’t only had experience of logistics from an airline perspective but from a trucking perspective.”
She says those in TFR who were involved in state capture have left or are under investigation, “which means they’re not in our space any more”.
She’s full of praise for the calibre of those who remain.
“They’re highly experienced individuals who I think are quite excited that from a group leadership perspective there are new people who have come in whose focus is to get the business back to where it should be, as opposed to seeing how much they can steal.”
It makes no sense that we have so much steel in the country and yet have to import rails
Siza Mzimela CEO, Transnet Freight Rail