RLL Container Report - 26 October 2016
From: John Keir, Ross Learmont Ltd. Email: john.keir@telia.com Date: 26 October 2016
The hills are alive with the sound of music
On the fifth of October, the bands were out in Addis Ababa, as the Ethiopian capital inaugurated the first of three highly important railway lines under construction by the Chinese in East Africa. The other two, in Kenya and Tanzania will follow on shortly. The three lines will radically alter the face of rail transport on the continent and at the same time will revolutionise global intermodal transport. If you had ever wondered “what is the point of all those ultra-large container carriers”, then rail intermodal transport in Africa will soon provide part of the answer.
The countries of East Africa are all faced with similar logistical problems. The container terminals are obviously located in ports at sea-level. However, much of the population and the capital cities are located much further inland often at rather high altitudes (in order to get relief from the scorching heat). Addis Ababa, for example, sits 2,335 metres above sea level, which poses logistical problems when trying to supply the almost 100 million inhabitants of that mountainous land. This was the main reason why the railways are powered by electricity.
The capital of land-locked Ethiopia lies 765 km from the Red Sea port of Djibouti, which handles almost all cargoes destined for Addis Ababa. Currently, trucks take three days at least to transport cargo from the port up to the capital city. This has placed a great deal of strain on the vehicles and the transport system, especially in times of drought, which sadly is a frequent occurrence in the region. The unreliability of road transport, coupled with the lower unit tonnage of trucks operating in mountainous terrain, when compared with efficiency and flexibility of rail intermodal transport, “sealed the deal” in favour of a rail-borne solution.
With the arrival of the new railway and modern rolling stock, the journey time by container block trains will be down to a mere 12 hours. Such a fast and reliable transport system will slash transport costs and provide a model for all other intermodal rail projects on the continent. Earlier this year Ethiopia suffered from a drought and foodstuffs were quickly sent to Djibouti but the trucks could not supply sufficient food, so the engineers made use of the uncompleted rail line to move emergency food supplies from the port into Ethiopia.
Now, with a fully-operational, modern intermodal transport system, food imports can be brought in more quickly and more cheaply. At the same time, container trains enable Ethiopia to exploit to the full its potential for valuable cash crops, such as coffee, which would pay for increased food imports. This also explains why traditional bulk shippers, such as grain and fertiliser producers have recently been showing an interest in containerizing more and more of their traditional bulk cargoes. The transport world is rapidly changing and the ripple effects of these changes are now being felt first in Eastern Africa and soon throughout the whole continent.
John Keir, Ross Learmont Ltd.
26 October 2016
Copyright ©, 2016, John Keir