Improvements on the Sena railroad in Mozambique to cost US$200 million

Maputo, Mozambique, 6 July – The introduction of improvement to the Sena railroad would cost over US$200 million and take at least 18 months, the chairman of Mozambican port and rail company, Portos e Caminhos de Ferro de Moçambique, said Tuesday in Maputo.
Brazilian mining group Vale and Australia’s Riversdale Mining have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in coal mining projects in Tete province and plan to use the Sena railroad to transport the coal to the port of Beira.
“This work will have a cost of US$200 million and we are talking to the coal companies, namely Vale and Riversdale, which will be the main users of the line,” said Adelino Mesquita adding that the two companies were available to take on part of the cost.
Construction work on the Sena railroad was due to be concluded last March, 16 months later than initially planned, and the railroad now has a transport capacity of 6 million tons per year, which is clearly not enough for the amounts of coal that the two companies plan to mine and export.
Vale plans to mine 1.5 million tons of coal this year and 6.3 million tons in 2012 and Riversdale Mining, which is now 100 percent owned by the Rio Tinto group, plans initially to mine 2 million tons of coal.

source: macauhub