South Africa's Richards Bay coal exports up 11% on rail improvements

Coal exports from South Africa's Richards Bay Coal Terminal rose 11% to 57.66 million metric tons in 2025, the highest in four years, as freight rail performance improved.

South Africa's coal shipments are still significantly lower than the 76 million tons recorded in 2017, mainly due to state-owned freight rail and port operator Transnet's limited capacity to haul commodities to export markets.

Transnet has struggled because of a shortage of locomotives and spares, as well as cable theft and vandalism of its infrastructure. This has forced some minerals exporters to resort to trucking to port, with some commodity cargo now going through Mozambique.

Major coal exporters including Thungela Resources TGAJ.J and Exxaro Resources EXXJ.J have, however, pointed to an improving freight rail performance since the second half of 2024.

RBCT, which has the capacity to handle 91 million tons of coal exports annually, said in a performance update on Tuesday that 7,157 trains were offloaded at the terminal in 2025, up from 6,342 the year before.

The average number of trains also increased to 20 per day, from 17 daily the previous year.

Asia remains the top destination for South Africa's coal, although its share of total shipments declined to 79.8% in 2025 from 84.5% the year before. India is the single largest importer of South Africa's coal, accounting for 25.75 million tons, or 45% of total shipments.

The portion of South Africa's coal exports heading to Europe edged up to 7.2% last year, from 6.8% in 2024, as exports to the Netherlands increased, RBCT data shows.

Shipments to the Middle East almost doubled to 3.54 million tons, with coal exports to Israel increasing by 1 million tons to 1.78 million tons, the data shows.

-Nelson Banya/Reuters