This is because both the company and the sector are suffering from ongoing incidents of crime.

Agri SA’s year congress took place on 13 and 14 October 2022 in Pretoria.

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Derby says they have already had meetings with the agricultural industry about the industry’s policing strategy for rural safety. She says there is a strong overlap between the crime areas Transnet has to deal with and the crime areas of the agricultural industry.

Transnet has lost tons of copper cables to theft over the years.

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During her presentation, Derby also highlighted that at the ports, agriculture has always been an important driver of Transnet, but on the rail side, it has not.

“For the longest time, we were not getting grappling (sic) with the fact that you’ve got to do something about supporting this sector, is that at Transnet when we’re doing our strategic planning, we look at the sector’s size and the importance in the economy, and then we try and figure out how might we be of some support,” explains Derby.

She adds that 80% of Transnet’s revenue comes from the minerals sector, while agriculture is a small contributor to the state-owned company’s revenue – especially on the railway side. “And because it’s been a tiny contributor for the longest time whenever we looked at strategy, there was not really active engagement with the sector.”

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Adding to that, Heleen Viljoen, an agriculture economist at Grain SA, adds that the grain industry transports grain using conveyer belts, railways as well as road transport, which mainly includes trucks.

She further explains that since 2006, the use of railways has decreased by +- 30%.

Transport statistics for 2022

55.3% of maize was transported by road; 7.4% by conveyer belts and 4.9% by railway.

65.1% of wheat was transported by road; 3.1% via conveyer belts and 4.5% via railway.

Conveyer belts refer to grain that has been loaded directly from a silo to a consumer.

Opportunities

Derby also shares that there are ways in which agriculture volumes can be increased on Transnet’s railways. She explains that the company is accelerating the reopening and upgrading of branch lines, citing that this will create an opportunity for private-sector investments in the network.

“In certain cases, the branch lines we think have an opportunity to actually flow into the main system… we would want to continue that maintenance, but in the other branch lines where you’re pulling something somewhere else, we would be open to a concession where the maintenance of the track was also the responsibility of whoever got the concession,” says Derby.

Derby’s presentation at the year congress of Agri SA came at a time when the South African Transport and Allied Workers Union (Satawu) and the United National Transport Union (Untu), along with its members, were in the midst of a national strike, wanting a wage increase.

UNTU and its members started striking on Thursday 6 October, while Satawu joined in on the strike on Monday 10 October.

As of Monday morning 17 October, no agreement had been reached between the parties.

OFM News